


See the cage it called

by szzzt



Series: World hanging upside down [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Asphyxiation, Captivity, Consent Issues, DIY quintessence therapy, Dubcon Cuddling, Dubious Consentacles, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt Shiro (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Japanese Shiro (Voltron), No Sex, Non-Consensual Drug Use, References to Suicide, Restraints, Sensory Deprivation, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)'s Missing Year, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Shiro has strong feelings about what counts as a sword, Slightly more than canon-typical violence, Tentacles, Torture, Ulaz is under cover as a jerk, Whump, druids are ultra spooky, fight scenes are the best, gladiator fights, metaphysical blankets, sort of, the medic is Ulaz but no Uliro sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-11-21 19:57:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11364531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/szzzt/pseuds/szzzt
Summary: Prisoners in solitary confinement, Shiro had read, get through it by keeping to a strict routine. Or at least, the ones that survive it reasonably intact have all imposed a pattern of organization on their days. Funnily enough, long manned missions also kept a strict routine.Shiro wanted to see the universe. The Kerberos mission crew might have been abducted by an evil interstellar empire, but he's sort of getting his wish.Shiro deals with being a captive and what it means for his crew, Earth's chances, and him.





	1. See the cage it called

**Author's Note:**

> Who wanted several thousand words of semi-canonical Shiro whump? I DID, I did very much! So this happened.
> 
> The torture is mostly left offscreen and undescribed, but please mind all the tags and tread carefully if needed. I think this is only a bit over canon-typical violence but it's darker in tone and I am very fond of fight scenes, so Graphic Violence I tagged it. If I missed any tags, please let me know!
> 
> Titles from [Song for Zula](https://youtu.be/FcdOLKx2XG8) by Phosphorescent. A good Shiro song.

Prisoners in solitary confinement, Shiro had read, get through it by keeping to a strict routine. Or at least, the ones that survive it reasonably intact have all imposed a pattern of organization on their days.

Funnily enough, long manned missions also kept a strict routine. It served as a crutch in some ways, but a crutch meant to support readiness rather than hinder it. Part of the routine was practicing all the ways it might be broken, and all the first-second-third responses. It helped; it meant a crew could react to catastrophe without shock, and smoothly carry out the actions set down in The Book as offering the best chances of survival.

There was a protocol for first contact. Matt had been silent and limp in his EVA suit, but the Commander and then Shiro had done their best to get through the spiel of approved Communication Points. Not having to draw pictograms was helpful considering their arms were cuffed behind their backs, but the fact that the aliens seemed to understand English perfectly well was disconcerting. If Shiro listened hard, he could hear sounds that didn't exist in English under their replies.

There was no protocol for being captured by a hostile alien ship with technology clearly superior to Earth's, beyond _Don't_. Well. There was sort of a protocol, a holdover from the old warring governments days. If any of them had made it back to base, they could have slagged it to just another crater on the surface of a pockmarked moon. But Shiro suspected this ship had left the Wayfarer-3 orbiter array and lander there on Kerberos, untouched, of no value or interest at all. 

The second part of the old protocol dealt with damage control after capture by unspecified hostiles. They'd never practiced it; Shiro had never even considered it seriously before, and he didn't like to consider it now. It was the kind of thing that would be too easy to think too much about.

But all that was the Commander's call, and it did him no good to dwell on it in solitary. After his second waking, he stopped thinking about scuttle orders. He had to set a routine.

The cell was small compared to an Earth room but luxuriously large compared to Wayfarer, with enough space to do modified forms as well as just about any body weight exercise. This ship had gravity somewhere on the heavy side of a gee; after eight months of half gee and resistance bands, it felt like a ton of rocks. Shiro didn't have to do much to sleep exhausted. Full gravity was good for his cardiovascular system anyway. With the calcium treatments they'd all undergone, he ought to recover bone density quickly for as long as he was in it. Long enough and he might get bones denser than normal before the treatment wore off.

And the cell was mostly dark, always. Pink-tinged light from the hallway came in the slit in the door, but the hall wasn't much brighter. The other cells he could see through the door were empty, no sign of his crew or anyone else being held along this hall. Food came at irregular intervals, like their captors sometimes forgot about him. There was no way to tell time. 

His fifth sleep was interrupted when the door slid open and one of the guards walked right in. Shiro stood up, trying to gauge whether there were more outside, and the guard hit him with an extendable baton that crackled with fat pink sparks and felt less like a taser than an electric sledgehammer. When Shiro could see again he was being dragged facedown between two of them, and couldn't control his legs. His shoulder hurt at about a... seven, muscles cramping all down his back. Damn. That level of pain alone was disabling, never mind the shockrod's other effects.

Up close and watching their gait, the two guards carrying him were definitely robots. Huh. He'd wondered about that before, in between passing out. Bipedal robots were versatile, sure, if you wanted them to be completely general-purpose, but it spoke to a lack of creativity, or maybe an obsession with form...

They were here, wherever here was. The robots took him through a door that irised instead of sliding and stood him up, holding him under the arms when his legs buckled and shook. He managed to raise his head and saw Commander Holt and Matt.

There was also a thing. In a mask with three rows of eyes.

"Shiro!" Matt said. "What did you do to him?"

The thing came closer. "Disabled," it hissed. "Standard handling of unknown threat level. Our time is valuable." It took Shiro by the chin and his skin crawled; its hand felt like bones and wire, with long nails, and it seemed to be studying his face. "How do you feel?" it said smugly.

"C-C-C—" Shiro said, looking at the Commander. "Scuttle?" His mouth wouldn't work right.

"No," Sam said quietly. "I don't think our knowledge can give them any advantage."

Shiro sagged. Thank god. "Feel r'frshed," he told the thing. "Y'shd try it."

It dropped his chin and hit him across the face, just with its hand. The floor swam. "Very good," it said. "Our mistress has been bored. If you are still disrespectful after interrogation, she may have the pleasure of an interview."

Shiro fuzzily reconsidered the merits of following The Book. Rescue from Earth, in this situation, was off the table. The thing was talking about torture. Sam and Matt were scientists, they'd never signed up...

"No, Shiro," Sam repeated, command snap in his voice. "Survive and salvage. That's our focus now. If we can get word back, it's worth it."

If there was any way to warn Earth, any way at all. "Sir," Shiro mumbled. "I'll try." He'd try to stay alive. He'd also take great pleasure in punching this thing in the face at the slightest opportunity. The other two were the ones with the skills to get off a message, to figure out this ship's tech well enough to use it or sabotage it for escape. His best value was as a distraction, now.

He settled down to be the best distraction he could be. 

When they threw him back in the cell later, the four fingers on his right hand were broken, but he'd cracked the thing's mask right through the second row of eyes. He set his fingers as best he could, and bandaged them all together with a strip of lining from his undersuit. 

The thing's mistress healed his fingers at the second interrogation. Shiro could have sobbed in relief; instead he made a fist, marveling at how the joints all worked, the lack of swelling, then tried to punch her too. It was like striking air, except for how much her hands could hurt, how a simple grip on his wrist could make his whole arm spasm and his vision gray out. He checked himself over carefully, back in the cell, but unlike her servants, whatever she did left no physical damage. He tried not to favor that arm, tried to still use it as a weapon when he was in front of them.

Sam and Matt called the robots sentries, in the in-between moments when they could talk. They'd gotten the word from somewhere; Shiro had the impression they weren't housed in solitary, but he wasn't sure.

The robots didn't need to hit him again after the first time — Shiro saved all his strength for the sessions — but instead they put manacles on him when they walked him anywhere and he started flinching at the touch. He lost count of the number of sessions; less than ten, he thought. Sam and Matt were there sometimes, not always. If Sam or Matt were there, Shiro baited the masked things viciously, saying anything he could think of.

One of the things gagged him, then made him scream through it. Shiro tried to kill the thing, honestly tried to thrash free and beat it to death, but he was spreadeagled and couldn't reach. It laughed at him. When the haze lifted that time he stayed limp, watching blood drip from his chin to the floor, so he wouldn't have to meet Matt's eyes.

The things' mistress seemed satisfied. She healed him again, and this time it hurt excruciatingly more than the initial injuries, made the world go gray and distant and the others' shouts mute down to nothing, though he could still, unfairly, hear her.

"Another healing will kill you," she said, amused. "Well, well. Our questions are long answered. Enough for now."

He thought Sam and Matt fought the robots dragging them out. Shiro couldn't fight. He couldn't walk. The robots dropped him in his cell, back in solitary, and two meals came before he had the strength to crawl over to the bowls.

The sessions did not resume. Shiro flinched every time the door slid open, every time he thought it slid open, but it was just meal delivery. No one ever came in.

He'd already seen Sam for the last time, though he didn't know it. It was thirty-six sleeps before he saw Matt again, in the holding pen of prisoners going to the arena.

* * *

Maybe that last session had shaken something loose in his head. He'd kept himself to a schedule before, more or less, but the first few sleeps and wakings afterward, he couldn't even try. The loose parts rattled around in his head and he couldn't keep count of his excercises, found himself blanking out between situps with no idea how long he'd been still, except his legs were pins and needles sometimes. All he wanted to do was sleep, but it wasn't good sleep.

He fell back on forms. A perk of training for a little more than twelve years, before he went to the Garrison, was knowing a lot of forms. If he did them all back to back at normal speed it took about an hour, and he didn't have to think about them. When he blanked out, he'd come back to find himself midway through the next in the sequence, or sometimes three or four further along.

Blanks of five to ten minutes were a little concerning.

For a little while he set a new schedule. He'd do four cycles of all his forms back to back, starting at tai chi speed and working up to as fast as he could go, to build stamina. Then he'd rest for as long as he could make himself before starting again. Sometimes that was just a few minutes, fine. Sometimes he'd sleep and that was fine too.

When he wasn't moving, he was cold. Especially his right arm and the other places she'd touched. His arm ached, down in the bone, and the cold made it worse.

Whatever. His normal meditation material was a little thin after the long voyage to Kerberos — a grove of pines on a hillside, yeah yeah, hard to remember the smell of pines or the feel of a wind. Instead, after he practiced forms, he started knitting a blanket.

An imaginary blanket. He'd tell Matt all about it. Matt would tease him mercilessly, but Matt would not have a super-awesome _imaginary blanket_ , and Matt would be secretly jealous.

It was brightly colored, because everything was dim on this ship and he was tired of magenta-white and gray. And it was made of qiviut, musk ox wool, lighter and warmer than the highly advanced polymer of the inner layer of his EVA suit. His aunt knew textiles, and he'd once held a shed hank of qiviut before it was spun into yarn. It was too light to register as touch; he could only tell it was there by looking, and by the sudden warmth of heat reflected back to his palm.

The pattern was based on leaves, mostly. He didn't know how real knitters switched between yarns of different colors, so his single strand changed colors as needed. He didn't worry about counting, just concentrated on making each loop, and when he came to the end of a row he rewound the yarn through the fingers of his other hand and went back the other direction. It was repetitive and mindless and required all his concentration, and that was what he wanted. It didn't make much sense to think of focused meditation as good excercise for his hands, but still — his right hand was clumsier at first, despite being his dominant hand.

To his surprise, he never had any trouble visualizing the freehand designs on the work he'd already done. The floor was as cold as ever, but as the blanket grew larger, he could swear his lap and then his legs were warm. He stretched it over himself to sleep, and didn't wake up shivering.

He worked on it for a longer session, to make it big enough to cover him completely, then wound it under and over himself in the most dimly shadowed edge of the cell and pulled the last corner over his head.

Oh. It was so _quiet_. Like a terrible noise had stopped, like a squeaky axle had finally gotten some oil and wasn't shaking itself apart anymore. He could feel all the places where he hurt, separate and finite and precise, and he could feel the cliff's edge of real sleep. 

He let himself drop off.

When he jerked awake at the sound of sentries passing down the corridor, half his body was numb — he hadn't moved in his sleep at all — but his head was clearer than it had been in ages. He got some water, shook out the pins and needles while muttering all the curse words he knew, then lay down and slept again. The blanket was so warm.

If this was going crazy, it was better than being sane.

* * *

He was awake and doing one-armed pushups when a larger group than normal came down the corridor and stopped in front of his door. Shiro rolled away from the door into a crouch and held tense and still.

The door slid open and instead of food, a sentry leveled its weapon at him while a second one stepped in. Shiro's blood went to ice, feeling like the floor had dropped out from under him and he was floating. He sank into kneeling and crossed his wrists above his head, letting the second sentry come up behind him.

There was a real guard behind the second sentry, dark-furred skin at its jaw and throat. Shiro froze, wondering what that meant. He couldn't take down sentries barehanded, but against a real guard he might have a chance. Three to one, though, all three of them armed, and he couldn't see an easy way to get the guard between him and the sentries.

"Poor bugger," the guard said, and raised its — his? — voice. "Face the wall."

Shiro didn't move. He was locking up the way he'd seen others do in the simulator, shit. He tried to move and couldn't do it. The sentry took him by the wrists and stood him to face the wall, pushing him against it. The other two came inside the cell, the first sentry still with its weapon leveled and the guard staying well out of its line of fire.

"Can you understand me?" the guard said. He waved a hand and Shiro tracked the motion. The palm was dark and hairless, but the rest had wispy blue fur and short but definite claws. "If you can't understand me we're going to stun and drag you."

Shiro breathed, and said "I understand you. But if you're taking me back to the things with the masks, you'll have to stun me." He settled his stance, dropping his center of gravity and getting a few inches away from the wall.

The sentry's other hand closed on the back of his neck. Shiro tucked his chin and kicked backward, trying for its knee, but the sentry already had a good grip. It lifted him bodily to his tiptoes by the neck and shoved him forward into the wall. Shiro gasped, creaking in his spine and roaring in his ears, pulse thundering against the pressure at the sides of his neck. Human bodies weren't meant to be lifted this way. From a distance he felt the guard take down one of his wrists from the sentry and then the other, locking them into manacles behind his back despite how Shiro tried to twist away.

The sentry let Shiro back down, though it didn't let go. He was shivering and his head swam. He locked his knees.

"That wasn't so bad, was it," said the guard, tugging on his arms by the manacles' center bar. "The Druids are done with you. You're going to processing. Get checked over, get a wash, get some real clothes. Nothing to be scared of. Come along."

Shiro wished the sentry would let go of his neck. Its fingers were hard and cold and as merciless as forklift tines. He hunched as it frogmarched him out, the guard behind keeping control of his wrists. It was hard to stay aware of his surroundings when he couldn't look around, but he kept track of the turns, and at the first big cross-corridor they went right instead of left. He sagged a little in relief.

"That's right," the guard said, "processing for you. Going to behave then?"

"Who are you?" Shiro asked. "What is this ship?"

"Hmm, hmm. I am sublieutenant Arnok, intake cell block eleven-B, and this is a peacekeeping cruiser of the glorious Galra Empire, and you are a slave. Haven't seen your kind before, a frigate must have picked you up on the fringes when we were doing sector patrol. You move like a fighter, though. I might put some money on you, if you're arena bound."

A slave? Shiro stumbled. _We come from a peaceful planet._ "Arena?" he said.

"Yes, we have a fine one. Seats five thousand, the entire offshift. Nothing like it when the crowd roars, though it's been a slow season. You might get a spotlight."

The sentry stopped Shiro next to a large door, parking him in an alcove that cut off most of his peripheral vision. The guard transferred his wrists to the sentry and the sentry pulled them out and up a little, locking Shiro's shoulders. Shiro swayed and licked sweat from his lips, his nose an inch from the wall. The sentry was doing a very good job of keeping him ungrounded. Either it knew how human shoulders worked, or the joint was a relatively common design.

 _Haven't seen your kind before._ How many different species were here? He hadn't seen the bodies of the masked things or the mistress well enough to compare them to the guard and other crew. They could all be different bipedal species, or the same. Any could have been the templates for the sentries.

 _We must have picked you up on the fringes._ God, he hoped so. The scopes had been clear, the morning they went out to gather ice cores. Nothing the size of that ship within a full light-hour. It had just appeared out of nowhere.

And the guard implied they weren't on the fringes any more. This Galra Empire... to _be_ an empire, when star systems were light-years apart... It must have faster-than-light travel and communications.

So they could be very far from Earth. But it might not be impossible to get back.

He tried to turn his head, to see what was going on, and the sentry lifted his wrists a little more, putting Shiro on the balls of his feet and his chest against the wall. "Don't struggle," it said.

"We're just doing some paperwork," the guard said. "Transfer of custody." He moved and spoke, as far as Shiro could tell, into something near the door. "Sublieutenant Arnok, to transfer prisoner 117-9875. Here for a full exam and processing."

_"Ah, Arnok. Yes, we're ready, bring it in to bay two."_

The door opened and the sentry marched Shiro in very quickly, hoisting him up when he stumbled down a step at the threshold. It turned him aside into a smaller three-walled area, then spun him to face the other way, lowering his arms and letting go of his neck. Before he could react the manacles clicked into place on some kind of frame that pulled him smoothly backwards, until his legs and lower back and shoulders came up against a hard surface. 

Shiro looked around, breathing hard. He was up against a table with strange cutouts. It would rotate up and lift his legs off the floor. There were straps, hanging at his sides and down by his ankles and beside his head. "No!" he said, and jerked at his manacles, trying to work out how they were secured behind him, through the open center of the table.

A new alien stepped close, of the same body-type and bluish fur as the guard but wearing a mask that covered just the lower half of its face instead of a helmet that covered the top half. Its ears were large and pointed and its eyes were flat yellow, no visible iris or pupil, like hers had been.

Shiro snarled at it and it raised its eyebrows, then reached behind him. There was a sting and a pneumatic hiss, something cold and pronged pressed against the inside of his elbow. The new alien stepped back. "This one gave you some trouble?" it asked Arnok.

"Not really," Arnok said. "It thought about it. Warned me that it didn't want to go back to the Druids, as if it would have had a choice. I didn't lie," he added to Shiro. "This is the medic, he'll give you your exam."

"Thank you, sublieutenant," the medic said frostily, accepting what looked like a transparent slab of glass, "that will be...." he trailed off, tapping at the clear surface. "This prisoner has been in a single since it was brought in? The custody log says it had nine sessions with the Druids."

" _Nine?_ Could that...possibly be a data entry error? Sir."

"There are nine transcripts attached," the medic said, scanning through something only visible on his side of the tablet. "The Lady Haggar was present for seven of them."

Arnok's mouth fell open. He took an actual step back.

"You like to chatter at them. You say it replied coherently?" the medic pressed.

"Y-yes, sir. It did seem confused, though. Asked what this ship was."

"Ah...yes, it's a novel species. Low-priority system, primitive tech, no resources to speak of; its people likely live in ignorance of the Empire. All this will have been an unpleasant surprise."

"We were peaceful explorers," Shiro said with painful emphasis. "If you would only listen. 'M right here. I can hear you. I'm not an _it_." He wondered how that came through the translator. _Your conversation excluding me is rude. I object to your pronoun usage. I am ungendered-with-agency not ungendered-without..._ The floor slipped and swayed; his head was hanging and he was having trouble standing up, but he didn't want to slide down and wrench his shoulders.

"Ah, there," the medic said. Shiro tensed, expecting a blow, but a blue-furred hand simply pressed Shiro back against the table, then pulled a strap across his chest under his arms. The same press against each hip in turn, and two more straps. Shiro jerked when the straps tightened, though the ones around his thighs were well-placed to take his weight. The floor swayed again, worse; no, the whole room — the table was rotating, and his feet lifted off the floor. The medic strapped down his ankles while the room was still spinning dizzily. Shiro twitched his legs away, but he was too slow, and the tightening straps moved his feet back into place and stuck them down. He looked at the ceiling and panted, his heart pounding through his whole body, like it was trying to panic for him when the rest of him couldn't get the message. The masked things hadn't used any drugs like this. They had wanted him to struggle, even if he hurt himself. He clung to that difference, digging his nails into his palms, and managed to roll his head away when the medic did things by the sides of his face. 

The medic tsked and raised little padded wings, then strapped his forehead in place. A loosening of pressure in his shoulders; his arms were brought forward, wrists strapped down while Shiro panted open-mouthed, far away from his body. Another tsk when his hands fell open loosely. His palms felt tacky-wet. With a huge effort Shiro lifted his eyelids, but he couldn't focus, couldn't see anything but the ceiling, blessedly empty of bright lights. Only a little less dim in here than everywhere else. His eyes fluttered closed again.

"Prisoner 117-9875," the medic said. "Intake examination. Subject is reasoning and coherent but shows strong anxiety response and some aggression. Standard dose of sennum acts as sedative and voluntary paralytic. Subject has cut its hands; note to trim its claws during processing. Sedation strongly recommended."

Touch on his head, hard pressure on his temples and cheekbones, the orbits of his eyes and the hinges of his jaw. A slightly softer exam of his throat, neck, and spine. Shiro swallowed painfully, still feeling the sentry's metal grip.

"Subject has been housed in a single for twenty-five cycles. Minor cuts to the palms, minor bruising on neck, both from intake. No other visible injuries. Removing outer coverings."

Shiro felt a cold line from the base of his throat down his sternum and twitched in alarm, fluttering his eyes to see. The medic was using a little hooked tool to cut his undersuit off with barely a tug, efficiently reducing it to pieces he could pull off around and under the straps. 

Lines across Shiro's chest, down his arms, and his sleeves flopped open; no longer clothing, just oddly shaped fabric. It was quick, and the medic didn't cut him, but the air was cold. Lines down his sides, over the points of his hips and further down the muscles of his legs until the tights of the undersuit slid apart and the medic could bare his torso and groin. Adrenaline fizzled through him, but there was nothing he could do. He twisted his wrists in the straps, feeling them respond like a long-distance relay. Maybe the drug was wearing off a little.

After training for Kerberos and then living elbow to armpit in the ship, Shiro hadn't thought he had much body modesty left. It was still uncomfortable to be on display. The masked things — Druids — had never removed their clothing beyond some accidental rips and tears; probably wouldn't even have registered the difference. Everyone was naked to them.

Deep breaths. Shiro wished he had his blanket here, but the medic would notice if he wasn't cold. Better to keep it for when he needed it. Keep it safe and secret.

"As noted in the Druids' reports, subject has patchy fur but no natural shell or armor. Partly external sex organs. Species theorized to have sexual dimorphism, but all three specimens are male." The medic scanned his chest and torso with something handheld and followed up with touch, firmly palpitating his ribs, with special attention to the floating ribs and the high ribs under and behind his arms. Shiro winced, but the exam wasn't truly painful the way it would be if any ribs were cracked. He could feel the touch even after the medic moved on, checking his low back, then the bones and joints of his hands and feet. "Confirmed no other physical injuries. Subject has not harmed itself in isolation. Beginning scan."

The table hummed, and there were the bright lights. Ugh. How could purple be so bright. The light felt like a wind blowing _through_ him, a little electric, like an infinitely weaker version of the shockrod. It didn't hurt, but Shiro shivered, hairs raising on his arms and shoulders.

"Distinctively strong basal melody, with harmonics up through the tenth order, middling complexity. Unusually large range for a species without advanced technology. The other two specimens are noted as also having large ranges of response, but not the same extent of active and stable resonance. Continuing... Gaps and other damage consistent with canceling, desynchronization, forced draining, forced healing. Localized persistent perturbations in front of head, back of neck, right arm."

His head and neck? Shiro hadn't known about those. He remembered her hand on his face, between his eyes, long nails sharp against his throat as she held his head still with her other hand. His skull creaking with the pressure, pain like a nova behind his eyes. He had no idea when, or the sequence of how that related to anything else.

He must have struggled, against that pain, and she was fantastically strong. Maybe she'd broken his skull holding him still, then healed it.

The Druids had liked to hit hard to dangerous targets, the temple and cheek and front of the face, hard enough to cause head or spinal trauma. There'd been reason to heal him repeatedly. Shiro shuddered and pulled away from the memory, blinking hard and focusing on the medic.

"Though the damage is extensive, subject also shows unexpectedly advanced levels of aural regeneration and high resilience to original melody. Hmph." The medic's eyes flicked to his face for the first time. "A novelty, perhaps unfortunately for you. I suppose it isn't a coincidence that you survived nine sessions."

It would hurt less to be hit in the face than addressed like a person in that tone.

Shiro showed his teeth. "Tell me," he said, a little slurred but it would do, "how safe 're all 'f you real crew with your titles and your rank? One mistake? Two?" The medic's ears pinned back, flat yellow eyes widening and then narrowing. Shiro grinned viciously; he knew with absolute certainty that the Druids would not discriminate. "Make sure not t' stand out. And not t' ever make that mistake."

The medic turned away without a word, pulling something out of a drawer and holding it up. "Test of subject's sensitization," he said, voice back to blandly clinical. "This tool does nothing but make a light and a sound." He flicked it on and off, like a penlight — deep magenta, of course — then shone it on Shiro's face and brought it close enough that he could hear a high rough whine, like the air was ripping.

_Her hand, pulsing with purple-black streamers that got into his head, up his nose, in through his ears and his eyes. He'd never be clean again._

Shiro gagged and choked, every muscle locked up, his ears ringing. His throat hurt; he'd screamed at least once or twice before the reflex — he gagged again, EVA and pilot training keeping anything from coming up, then coughed miserably to keep his airways clear. The medic was bent over him, one hand on the forehead strap and the other ready to turn his head if Shiro needed it, and straightened up slowly as Shiro managed to keep breathing on his own.

"Subject displays high sensitivity to the test frequencies, undergoing a gap and a replay. Moderate to severe symptoms of mind-tearing are to be expected, as in most sentients the psyche and aura heal at different rates. Recommend to limit or control exposure, as subject's reaction will be unpredictable."

Shiro watched with half-lidded eyes. There was a roaring in his head, nearly as bad as after the sessions had been. The room pressed on him; the lights were too bright now, there were too many things here he didn't know, and he couldn't get enough air, even though he was taking huge gasps, filling his lungs. He pulled against the straps, trying harder, jerking over and over.

"Administering sennum triple dose," the medic said, and there was the cold sting inside his elbow again. "Sedating subject for rest of processing." He kept talking, pulling over a little cart and rummaging through its drawers, but the world peeled slowly away, and Shiro fell down and down.

He came back to himself on his side, on what felt like a rubbery sort of tile. He wasn't tied down. He jerked and tried to push himself up, but his eyes couldn't stay open longer than a quarter second and his arms gave out, collapsing him back to the tile. It was wet. He was naked and wet all down his left side where he had been laying on it.

Someone squeaked and jumped back from him. Shiro recoiled, hitting a wall behind him, then savagely tried to get his eyes open. His arms still wouldn't hold him up, and the rubbery floor came up against his face again. There was loud running water nearby, voices, the sense of movement, of several people. Shiro scrabbled and kicked, pulling his knees up to protect his groin and torso, arms up in shaky guard around his head.

One constant voice over the other voices. Someone nearby, talking to him low and soothing and insistent. He screwed his eyes open long enough to catch a shape in the dimness, skin lighter than the guards' blue-purple, dark hair matted down. Pupil and iris eyes, not flat yellow. Human. Matt?

"Yeah, yeah," Matt was saying, "I'm just gonna stay right here, let's stay right here for a minute. Shiro? Are you waking up? Can you hear me, are you with me here? If not, that's okay, we have time, it's okay." Matt looked over at the other voices, the other motion. "Or we don't have time. Okay. Shiro, I'm going to turn on the water now, it's going to spray on us, it's going to be wet and sort of cold. Don't break my elbow, please okay." Matt reached over Shiro to touch something and the wall thrummed and sprayed Shiro's back, soaking him; more fell from above. Shiro flinched, then left his mouth open. He was so thirsty. He slowly let his guard lower, let his arms and legs go limp and turned his face up. It was just water, he could smell it, he didn't mind if it got in his eyes.

"Okay Shiro, okay, I'm going to wash your...hands, yeah, we'll start with hands. That's not too threatening, right? Looks like you got your nails cut, just like me. Hm." Smaller hands held just one of his and rubbed the back, then hesitated over the palm. "You have a wound dressing here. That's nice, they're waterproof, and it'll break down and peel off in a few days. I can wash over it." Matt washed his arm all the way to the shoulder; there was a sponge tethered to the wall, and slippery orange goop, and Shiro could feel the grime coming off his skin and washing away. It was his right arm, but Matt's touch didn't hurt at all. It felt warm, like his skin was soaking it up.

Matt set his arm down, laying it gently on Shiro's chest. "Okay, I'm gonna do my hair now, I need both hands for that. You're blinking, you definitely look more with it. Boy, you really need some scrubbing, I'm glad they're letting me stay. You just lie there and enjoy having like 4% of your surface area clean."

Shiro set both hands against the tiles and levered himself up, leaning against the wall. The room rocked and Matt's voice went to bright fuzz for a second, but this time he stayed upright. It was pleasant, having less water getting in his eyes and nose.

_Black worms, pushing in pushing under his skin—_

Shiro blinked back to awareness. That was not pleasant. He almost preferred the blanks, the gaps where he just went away, aura or psyche or whatever. Matt had noticed, probably; his hands were deep in his own hair but his eyes were sharp and his words had stopped flowing for the moment.

"Matt," Shiro said, and risked another faceplant to reach out and grip Matt's ankle. "You're okay."

"Fundamentally okay."

"Sam?"

Matt looked away sharply and rinsed his hair. "We were separated a couple cycles ago, but he was okay then."

Shiro hung his head. "I'm glad."

"Can I wash your hair?" Matt asked, and at his nod, Matt showed him a palmful of the orange goop and warned before he touched. Other hands on his scalp made Shiro shudder a little, at the same time as it felt good. The goop was Ph-neutral, similar to baby shampoo; like Matt, Shiro didn't close his eyes.

The scrubbing went much faster with both of them working. In another few minutes Shiro could get to his feet, though he couldn't straighten up at first. He cupped his hands and drank the water until he didn't feel so parched inside, then took care of his own more sensitive areas while Matt got his legs, Matt's face scrupulously turned away from his groin. Shiro felt around carefully, but as far as he could tell, nowhere was sore that hadn't been before. His fingernails and toenails were trimmed, as Matt had mentioned, and his hair was shorter; the water trickled and prickled down the back of his head in a way he hadn't felt since the buzz had grown out. He thought about asking, but really, getting clean mattered more.

"There's a sentry watching us," he remarked to Matt.

"Yeah, there's one by the entry doors too. They won't bother us as long as we're washing ourselves. You have to be clean to leave this room and go through to where the food is."

"You've been through 'processing' before?"

Matt grimaced. "Just once, with the full exam and that scanner thing, but they've cycled us through the haircut and showers routine a couple times since then."

"Ah."

Matt touched the back of his hand gently, surprisingly lightly. "Were you hurt? I've seen people brought unconscious from the exam room before, but they were there for major injuries."

"No, uh. I think the medic was concerned about me attacking him. Or hurting myself." And rightly so; if anyone had tried to cut his fingernails while he was conscious, he'd have done his best to make them regret it. Shiro clenched and unclenched his fists, then looked up startled when Matt laughed.

"So that's why everyone gave me the look when I volunteered to stay with you," Matt said.

"The look?"

"The 'you-are-crazy-stay-away' look. Hey, my badass reputation went up several notches, I can coast off this for weeks. I'll just describe how I talked you down from killing me with the loofah."

Shiro smiled, slightly against his will. "I don't know, there's still time for me to kill you with the loofah. Wouldn't be the first time I've been tempted, honestly."

"But who would scrub your back if you kill me with the loofah?" Matt brandished it. "I'll do you, and then you can do me."

The water shut itself off as soon as they were done rinsing, and the lights dimmed, making the sentries' pink visor-slits stand out more. Shiro walked warily toward the door Matt identified as the exit, one arm over Matt's shoulders, though his balance was pretty much back. He stayed between Matt and the sentry waiting there, and he could feel Matt notice that from the sudden strength in the grip on his wrist.

"You go first," Matt said, and ducked backwards under Shiro's arm. "I don't want you stuck here alone if it decides you're not clean enough. Just stand on the pink square."

The sentry said nothing and did nothing. It didn't have a sidearm, but the one at the far entrance did, and it had been trained on them since Shiro was awake enough to notice. He stepped gingerly onto the square and jumped at a quick play of light over his skin.

"Proceed," the sentry said, and the indicator beside the door blinked over to unlocked.

"Just walk all the way through," Matt said. "I'll follow in a minute."

Shiro stared at the sentry, frowned back at Matt, and walked through. It was eerie to have a door open just for him and to go through it under his own power. It closed behind him before he could change his mind and go back, and being on one side of a locked door was solidly back to the familiar.

This was more like a narrow hall than a room, and it was dim and hot after the cool damp of the showers. Shiro walked forward and something behind the walls whirred up, blasting hot air at him. He covered his face and stumbled through, thinking of the desert at midsummer and the sweltering oven air down in the arroyos.

The fans died down as he reached the far end, and a box in the wall slid open. There was folded cloth inside, black and gray. Shiro looked around, then pulled it out carefully by one corner.

The door at the far end swished open and he went through into an even smaller room, like an airlock, and yet another play of lights before the last door opened and Shiro froze. There were people.

Lots of people, all different. Different species. All in gray and black, none of them in armor or masks. All staring at him. Shiro stared back, then stepped slowly out of the airlock and let the last door close behind him.

He'd wondered about species. Here was an answer. Some of these people weren't remotely bipedal — one looked like a centipede with a beak — and none were as close to humanoid as the medic or the guard. They had to all be from different planets. Different _systems_ — no known system had enough planets in the Goldilocks zone to give rise to this many species that liked water and carbon and oxygen and Earth-similar gravity. Shiro edged along the wall and sat down heavily, surprised to discover he was still clutching the bundle of fabric. With an effort, he stopped staring, and caught how several of the aliens shifted in apparent relief.

Oh my god. First contact with _everyone at once_. Commander Holt must have been beside himself. Shiro couldn't stop himself from looking again, and remembered like a shock of cold water: the Galra Empire, whatever it was, touched all of these people. Held all of them prisoner, if he wasn't mistaken, just like three human explorers who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

He was still getting uncomfortable looks. Right. He was still naked, and that wasn't the norm on this ship any more than on Earth. Shiro shook out the cloth to find a long one-piece jumpsuit and a gray overshirt. Both were clean and smelled of nothing in particular, and the jumpsuit had boots built in. He struggled the legs partly on before realizing that any finger drag starting at certain circular markings would unzip it in any direction, and it sealed up again seamlessly with a finger drag back the other way. It went on much more easily after that, and he sealed it up his chest to realize it was skin tight. The overshirt at least felt like he was actually wearing clothing. It was just cloth, none of the fancy zipping, though he still couldn't find any seams.

His aunt would love these clothes, after she got done telling him three ways to manufacture a shirt without seams. Shiro shook his head. A practical grasp of orbital mechanics did not make him able to follow complex topology theory.

But he'd tell her about this, if he ever got back to Earth.

The unmarked door swished open and Shiro reacted, coming to his feet a meter further away, but it was only Matt, hair wildly windblown and half into his own jumpsuit. "Oh good," he said to Shiro, "you figured out the fastenings. Everyone, this is Shiro. We're both from Earth, and he's my friend."

The other prisoners gave them an even wider berth, and Matt grinned cheerfully. "Let's get some food."

There was a row of cupboards in the wall above where Shiro had been sitting, some with the 'locked' indicator and some with a variation that had a single vertical line through the symbol. Matt touched one of the locked ones and it blinked over to unlocked, then sprang open at a push. "Two bars, sweet," Matt said. "Each one of us can open one locker. The amount of food inside is sort of random, so if you get extra it's good to save it."

"These others are empty?" Shiro asked, hovering his hand over one of the vertical-barred ones.

"Yeah. Don't touch, they'll shock you."

Shiro paused. "Dangerously?"

"No, only enough to—"

Shiro touched the locker and felt the snap, then shook out his hand. "Ow," he said mildly. Matt opened his mouth, closed it again, and said "Do you have a blister, wiseass?"

"No." He'd touched with the callus on his knuckles. "Felt it up to my elbow, though. That felt like regular electricity." He moved to the last locked one and touched it, ready to be shocked again, but it beeped and opened innocuously. There were three bars inside. 

Matt crowded close, blocking view from the rest of the room, and gave Shiro a look. "Eat one before anything else," he said. Shiro nodded and gathered them up silently. These clothes didn't have pockets, but he considered and unzipped down from his neckline, tucking a bar under his arm next to his skin where the baggy overshirt would cover it. Matt nodded approvingly; his extra had already vanished.

The bars were surprisingly not bad, mostly protein-tasting with hints of sweet, like tough tofu with a bit of syrup. "Better than the bowls of mush," Shiro said at Matt's stare. "Though the bowls themselves being edible was interesting. It's nice to have something different." 

They went together to cup their hands and drink from the spigot in the corner, the same way Shiro had in his cell. No one bothered them, or even watched. Eyeing the trough in the floor that was the other feature of the corner, Shiro figured that the privacy taboos among group-housed prisoners were likely very strong. That would be another reason for them to give him a wide berth until he learned.

Shiro took out his last bar. "I don't need this," he said to the room in general, and left it next to the spigot. "If anyone didn't get enough, you can take it or split it."

No one looked; a few turned further away. Matt shook his head and drew Shiro back to their place along the wall. "I knew you'd do that. Just leave it. They don't know you, they don't trust you to just give it away."

"I don't need it. You don't need it."

"It's a favor-based economy around here, and they don't know what you're asking for."

"I'm not asking—"

"Favors are all we have," Matt said, exasperated. "You don't even know what you _could_ ask for."

Shiro stared at him. "Um. In return," he raised his voice, "next time you have extra, share with someone else the same way, if you can. And, ah, I'm new here. If you see me doing something stupid and you're able to let me know, or tell me how to fix it, I would appreciate that."

"That's much more reasonable," Matt said.

Shiro smiled at him. "Goes for you too."

"Please. I'll tell you when you're doing something stupid for free."

Shiro blew out his breath, eyes lingering. This was was the first chance he'd gotten to really look. Matt had lost weight, Shiro thought, but he moved all right. His glasses were gone — probably taken at the very beginning, along with the outer layers of their EVA suits and all the metal fittings. He squinted more, but he was fundamentally the same, fundamentally himself. "How are you doing, Matt?"

Matt looked back at him, losing the humor. "I'm all right, pretty much. I don't like being apart from Dad, but... we planned for getting split up. It isn't a surprise. What about you?"

Shiro laughed, leaning his head back against the wall.

"That good, huh," Matt said, poking himself in the bridge of the nose as if to resettle his missing glasses. "You look all right. Better than I expected when I saw you."

"I've had a rough day," Shiro said.

"Your hand," Matt said, reaching out. Shiro let him pick it up without comment, the same hand he'd scrubbed in the shower room. Matt's fingers were warm on his skin. "Your fingers are all right," Matt explained. "They were really broken?"

"Ah." Shiro drew it back, making a fist and then sticking it under his arm. Matt didn't miss the protective gesture. "They were healed."

"Ah," Matt parroted, eyebrows climbing. "Well, give it back. Your hands are way too cold for someone who just got blow-dried."

He had that obstinate look, and his touch did feel good. Shiro sighed and unfurled. Matt wanted to check every bone and joint, it felt like.

"You asked Dad about scuttle orders because you'd be the one to carry them out," Matt said a few minutes later, in the thoughtful tone of someone who'd been turning it over in his head.

"In this situation, yes. If it was medical, or a starvation situation, probably not me."

"You are the one we'd eat first," Matt teased.

Shiro rolled his eyes. "I know, thank you."

"You think you could have done it?"

"Psych evals said I could. I found that pretty disturbing, so. I never took it seriously until—" Shiro shrugged, "—all this, when I had to ask him."

Matt sat back. "You think you could have done it."

Shiro closed his eyes and breathed deep before opening them again. "I don't know. I'm very glad he said no."

Matt nodded to himself a bit, apparently not too disturbed to imagine dying at Shiro's hands, then leaned back in. "They're taking us to the arena tomorrow. They split up me and Dad because he's too old for the arena, so he's going to a work camp, but if their work camps are anything like human history, I doubt that was a humanitarian choice. Heh, humanitarian." Matt met his eyes. "I'm 'marginal,' which probably means I and the other disappointments will be thrown out as warm-up for a strong opponent. The reigning champion is Myzax. He uses some kind of ranged weapon."

Shiro nodded, assembling the intel. "Any way for you to get disqualified?"

Matt made a face. "Everyone here is zeroes, which I guess means first-timers, so no one's sure of the rules. They did say if a fighter deliberately injures themselves before a fight, they're shot then and there by the guards that come to escort them and the other fighter gets a forfeit. That happened last time, when about ten of them were taken away to fight."

"Six left now, eight counting us, so they'll probably take us all."

Matt nodded glumly. "Myzax goes through a lot of opponents. I'll be playing up how sad and pathetic I am, just in case that helps, but—" he looked around. "We're not really the cream of the crop, here."

Shiro smiled apologetically, just in case any of their fellow prisoners had heard that. Most of them were asleep, though one or two were staring blankly at nothing, eyes flat with exhaustion. The only one watching them displayed no sign of interest at all.

Well. If Matt wasn't here, that was the face Shiro would be making.

"Except you," Matt added. Shiro reached out without looking and shoved him gently into the wall, enjoying the cackles. On Wayfarer one good shove could launch Matt the whole length of the central null-gee compartment and out the hatch at the far end.

He couldn't blame the others, these wildly varying people who'd been prisoners far longer than he had. Pulled away from their slavery just to die for a bloodthirsty gladiator in a slow season. He couldn't blame them, but he didn't have it in him to inspire them either. They'd be immovable, down in their despair like this, and he was barely here.

After a bit Matt just leaned on him, and maybe Shiro leaned back. It was nice to be near another person. To have a source of warmth.

...And speaking of which. He really shouldn't waste the second opinion.

"I have a weird hypothesis," Shiro said quietly. "But I've also been in solitary for at least several weeks, and could be getting strange. Want to help me check for replicability?"

"I love checking for replicability," Matt said. "I will also come back to what you just said. Lay it on me."

"Don't worry, I told you it was weird. What I just said will come back up. Hold out your hands and close your eyes."

Matt did, not without giving him the 'I'm trusting you to not mess with me' warning look. Shiro chose at random and draped his imaginary blanket over Matt's left hand.

Matt shivered. "Cut it out," he said. "If you're just going to hold your hand over mine, I don't need to keep my eyes closed."

"Open them then," Shiro said. "I'm holding still." He watched as Matt opened his eyes, did a double-take at Shiro fully two feet away, then looked down at his empty palms.

"I could swear you were holding your hand right over mine. Not touching, but I could feel the warmth."

"My hands are cold," Shiro reminded him. "I reached out right after you closed your eyes, but didn't come closer than six inches, and then I put my hands on the floor."

"Weird," Matt said. "I could swear my hand still feels warm."

"One more time?"

Matt looked half freaked-out, half intrigued. He closed his eyes and raised his hands again.

"I'm reaching out again," Shiro said. He lifted the blanket off Matt's hand, then flipped a corner of it to drape between Matt and the wall, over his head. "Tell me what you—"

Matt shot up. "Cut it out, Shirogane!"

Shiro winced and stayed on the floor. "Sorry. What did it feel like?"

Matt was wild-eyed, pressed against the wall. "It felt like you were hugging my head. Warn me before you do that. Even when there's wall behind me so that couldn't possibly be what you were doing!"

"Why did it feel like me?"

"It just did." Matt narrowed his eyes. "What the hell is going on."

"This is going to sound weird," Shiro said, shrugging when Matt gave him a look. "Remember how I would meditate on the trip out? And how one time you asked me what I was doing and I said cross-stitch? That wasn't actually a lie. I have a good visual memory."

"Freaky good," Matt muttered.

"Remember how I said I've been in solitary for a while? Well. While I was there, I knitted myself an imaginary blanket. Except if I can feel it, and you can feel it, it's not actually imaginary."

"An imaginary blanket," Matt said flatly.

"I draped it over your head instead of your hands. I'm sorry, I should have realized that might feel strange, considering that you _can_ feel it and it's not just me losing my mind."

"What does it feel like to you?"

"Warm." Shiro considered. "Safe. Not actually safe, but quiet, and...like there's space."

Matt looked at him unreadably, then sat back down. "Okay," he said after a moment. "Quit hogging the insanity blanket, Shirogane. If you're losing your mind, then I'm already gone and just gibbering in a corner somewhere, and I'd rather be warm and comfy while I gibber."

Shiro grinned. "I knew you'd see it my way." He gathered up the blanket, making it obvious that he was draping it over his shoulders, and holding the rest out to Matt. Matt ducked under his arm and Shiro tucked it around him, covering his feet. 

Matt caught his breath and then relaxed slowly, a warm heavy weight against Shiro's side. "So what's your weird hypothesis, if you're not going nuts?" he asked after a few minutes.

"Mm," Shiro said. "I think this ship runs on ki."

"You think the alien ship runs on mystic life-energy," Matt nodded. "I'm sure that will make perfect sense."

"Watch," Shiro said. "See the light-panel over there?" He picked one a meter or so to Matt's other side, a magenta-white panel inset in a curving arch that projected slightly from the wall, like all the thousands of others in the larger rooms and corridors.

He'd figured this out when he was doing forms. He had the size of his cell down perfectly, knew exactly how deep he could step and where to put in an extra repositioning shuffle to accommodate the length of the form. He could practice with his eyes closed, full power, and come within an inch of the walls without hurting himself. He'd been thinking about that and his school's old annual winter solstice class, sparring in the dark and punching out candle flames by _extending one's ki_ , half-silly half-serious.

Shiro thought about a candle flame dancing in a dark hall, drew back his right fist, and imagined punching through the light panel and the wall and the hall beyond. The snap of extension made Matt jump.

The light panel flickered. Matt stared at it, and Shiro realized that several of their fellow prisoners were staring too.

"Shit," Matt said. "That made all the hair on my arms stand up! Can you—"

"Be careful," said the froglike alien, while the older one with the eyestalk said "Group cells are monitored—"

The door swished open and Shiro jerked away from Matt, putting his hands above his head. Two sentries came in. One levelled its weapon at the prisoners, who cowered, and the other strode in, grabbed Shiro by his crossed forearms, and slammed him facefirst against the wall. "Do not interfere with ship systems," it said. "117-9875. You have been bet on. Terminating you is countermanded, but one of this group will be terminated for each further offense."

"Understood," Shiro said. "I didn't mean to—"

There was a crackle that made dread run down his nerves. The sentry hit him with a shockrod and he convulsed, cracking his head against the wall. Through the haze he felt it hit him again, felt himself scream as muscles locked, then jerkily tried to control the fall as it dropped him on the floor. The spasms ripped another sound out of him, but he managed to get an arm up to protect his head and then Matt was touching him, Matt's warm hands on his arm and face and Matt's voice swimming in and out of hearing.

"Let me see, Shiro...—gone, it's all right, let me see..."

"Sorry," he gasped. "Sorry, sorry, d-d-didn't realize. They never." The froglike alien was next to Matt, also looking concerned. "I'd n-never choose to put anyone else in danger," he told it. "I won't." He was curled tight on his side in the corner, legs drawn up, shaking in uncontrollable jerks. "D-d-damn. Ow. Forgot how much those hurt." He let Matt pull his hands down and look at his pupils, but flinched away when Matt tried to touch his back.

"Okay, okay," Matt said soothingly. "Shiro? You with me?"

"He's mind-torn," the eyestalked one said. "The Druids have had him. I can tell their work. He might get us killed."

"He won't," Matt snapped. "He was trying to show me something, he didn't know it would make them come in."

"S-s-sorry," Shiro said. The pain was starting to pass. He felt the cool deckplate against his cheek and let himself uncurl a little, still trembling. "Did I blank out?"

"A bit," Matt said. "Dad does it too. His aren't that long, though. You were gone for a couple minutes."

"That's not too bad," Shiro said, and hissed in as he shifted. "Sort of nice to miss some of the excruciating pain." Matt was gray and shocky-looking, his lips pale. "Did they hurt you? Are you all right?"

"Didn't touch me," Matt said. "I'm fine."

"Mmnnyeah, I'm fine too. You know what I could use."

"What?"

"A blanket," Shiro said. He found the edge of it with his hand, then pushed it up against Matt. "There y'go. S'all up to you now."

Matt felt it out, hands closing and pulling on nothing. "I can't, um... It just feels warm to me."

"Pretend," Shiro said. "You can't rip it. Jus' spread it out. S'okay."

"You are tripping out so hard on endorphins right now," Matt said, and made the motion of shaking out a blanket to cover them both, then methodically pretended to tuck it between Shiro's back and the wall.

Shiro relaxed a little, warmth spreading. "Yeah." He didn't mind when Matt lay down against him, but then Matt took Shiro's head in his hands, fingers pressing against his temples and combing through his hair. "Um?"

"You hit your head against the wall a couple times," Matt said. "You've got a lump mid-forehead. Should be okay. That's a thick part of the skull." His fingers paused. "Your hair's coming in white here. Did you know?"

Shiro frowned, confused. "No, no mirrors. It is?"

"Yeah, right at your widow's peak. Your bangs are gonna be white. Huh, this is weird, I was checking to see whether you have a scar here from some head injury I didn't know about, but your roots are white up to an exact regular circular edge, it's um, not natural."

Shiro drew a quick breath through his nose. _Her hand on his face._ "How big is the circle, if you project it out?"

"Can I touch your face?" Matt said, and at Shiro's nod he placed a thumb right below Shiro's hairline and scribed a circle around it with his fingertip. It covered Shiro's forehead neatly, passing an inch or so above his eyebrows.

"—iro? You here?"

"I think it was her," he said absently. "I think I remember when she did something. She held me down."

Matt took a ragged breath. "Don't talk about it."

"Can't hurt me now."

"Don't _talk_ about it, okay? I wish they'd fucking...." he trailed off, almost inaudible. "Anything but what they did to you. I wish they'd gone after me more. I mean I _don't_ , I don't think I could handle it, I think I'd be dead, but I don't want to be grateful that they hurt you instead."

Shiro half-laughed. "I'll be grateful for both of us then."

"You fucker," Matt said, and he was crying, silent sobs in his body and warm wetness in Shiro's hair. "I don't want to remember."

Shiro hugged him back, folding his arms around Matt's shoulders. "I don't remember much, Matt. It's okay. I know. I didn't do well, watching you and your Dad get hurt." He took a deep breath. "They weren't doing it to get to you. They had some kind of interest in me. They did it just because they wanted to."

"Those sick fucks," Matt said. 

"Yeah," Shiro agreed.

"I'm gonna kill them, if I get the chance."

"Okay," Shiro agreed. 

He rubbed Matt's back, and eventually, they both slept.

The extra food bar was gone from next to the spigot.

* * *

"You're wrong, though," Matt said the next morning, when they were both awake and not pretending any more. Everything was the same as when they went to sleep, except for the tension in the room and the note of finality in Matt's voice. Shiro didn't like it.

"What?"

"Dad told me. Survive and salvage — we're all equal. If one of us sees a chance, we have to take it, whether the other two are there or not. Dad made me promise." Matt peered down at him. "Do you get it, Shiro? There are no mission specialists now."

That didn't seem right. "You two—"

"No," Matt said, and shook him a little bit. "I don't know what goes through your head, but all our skills are equal now. Survive and salvage. Don't you dare try to _prove_ that scientists are better at surviving. Don't you dare."

Shiro frowned ruefully. "They didn't choose me for my self-preservation, Matt."

"They should have," Matt said, icy and precise. "That's on them. But what you need to understand is that you are one-third of all the chances Earth has. You can't waste yourself."

"I won't," Shiro said. He would have added more, but the words slipped away when the door swished open and six sentries came in. The sidearm of one that stayed by the door was focused quite obviously on Matt.

Their time was up.


	2. I said come on in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You can do this," Shiro tried. Matt was shaken by the roar of the crowd, the size of it, the reverberation in the air and the walls and the deck under their feet. Shiro could feel the vibration in his chest cavity, like being near a summer parade with one of the biggest three-meter taiko drums. But this was a constant unceasing roar and not a friendly sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOOYAH who squeaked it in under the wire of s3? Just barely but it counts!!
> 
>   * This darn thing kept getting longer.
>   * Consists entirely of Shiro whump and fight scenes. This may be the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written.
>   * Some tags have been added, some tags carry over and apply to this chapter. Upping the rating to Mature. Sex (?) is offered at one point, but the refusal is respected and this story stays gen.
> 


"You can do this," Shiro tried. Matt was shaken by the roar of the crowd, the size of it, the reverberation in the air and the walls and the deck under their feet. Shiro could feel the vibration in his chest cavity, like being near a summer parade with one of the biggest three-meter taiko drums. But this was a constant unceasing roar and not a friendly sound.

The sound got louder, much much louder, when the large hatch at the end of their passage slid up and open. There was a wide white-floored space beyond, the ceiling hugely high and lost, more brightly lit than any space Shiro had seen on this ship so far. The screaming rumble was like a living thing, a force filling the air and pressing on all sides of his head. Matt stopped short and Shiro did too; all the prisoners were frozen.

A sentry stepped in from outside and offered Matt a sword. Shiro's thoughts skipped a beat. Not a sword; more like a two-handed axe, with a hooked and massive crescent tip to drive through armor, and two handles with one crosswise behind the blade like a tonfa or a side-handle police baton. Unless it was a fake it would be fantastically heavy, but it bore the marks of prior use and no fake would survive that.

No weapon for an amateur, much less one that would give a starving, weakened slave any kind of fighting chance. It was a flashy handicap.

Matt had been right; this wasn't a fight they were intended to survive. This crowd wanted to see death.

Matt was still locked up. He couldn't tell Shiro what to do here; his hard-won competence was deserting him. A feeling Shiro wouldn't wish on anyone.

Shiro stepped around him, the world seeming to slow down. He had to do this fast, before anyone could react, before their escort could reimpose the proper order. Shiro broke the sword out of the sentry's grip and danced back, brandishing it like a hatchet. "This is my fight!" he yelled. In the same motion he turned and slashed the air just short of Matt, then leapt forward with an ankle hook to take him down backwards as he stumbled back in shock. 

On the ground Shiro drew the blade along Matt's shin to his knee, quick and precise, calling on every crazed attacker he'd played in old self-defense drills for his body language and his expression. "I want blood!" he snarled. Matt wouldn't be able to walk on that. He could smell the blood, thick and copper and human, welling up before Matt even caught his breath to scream.

Shiro leaned closer, too close for the sentry or other prisoners to see. "Look after your father." He couldn't hear himself in the noise; he couldn't tell if Matt had heard. Sentry arms snaked under his and ripped him up, tossing him out backwards into the sand.

Shiro stumbled and caught his feet; he'd kept hold of the sword, good. A pink latticework buzzed into existence over the hatchway. Matt stared at him through it, half held up by the froglike prisoner, and the sentry was kneeling to scan his leg. His look was stricken.

Shiro smiled and shook his head, then turned away. No one else was going to be pushed out here, not if he could stop it. No one else would be needed. _Win before you fight,_ he thought distractedly, one of the old swordwork sayings. They weren't going to watch him fight. They were going to watch him win.

He grinned across the sand, out to where his opponent was, and swung the terrible sword around the fulcrum of its grip, feeling out its balance. The long pommel had an odd sort of wrist guard that he could thread his forearm through to grasp the crosswise handle, but it was still as tip-heavy as a hammer, not a weapon he could hold up in forward guard for more than a few minutes; not a tip he could move quickly or precisely, but it would do serious damage if he could swing wide enough to stack up momentum. 

All right. He didn't thread his hand through the wrist guard yet. Instead he reversed it, heavy blade parallel and behind his right shoulder, guarding with the pommel and the blade edge curving out where crossbars would be on a human sword, and started cautiously trudging out toward the center of the arena. The crowd noise swelled in approval and anticipation, then quieted more than he thought it could. For the first time he could hear his steps in the fine-packed sand.

His opponent was down at the far wall, not more than a couple meters from the matching far-end hatch he'd entered through. It was hard to judge height from here, but Shiro guessed he was well over three meters, muscled like a bodybuilder, and one ugly customer. Bipedal, two arms, no hair — another humanoid species, but no friend to be made here. He wielded a clunky staff that widened to a cup on the end, more like an unlit torch than anything Shiro could match as a weapon. He looked at Shiro and grinned with serrated teeth at the terrible sword, but made no move to advance.

If this was Myzax, he could attack at range and he had no plans to give up that advantage. Shiro walked to just his side of the center, midway between two thick much-scarred pillars, and stopped.

Then yawned, and mimed picking his teeth with a convenient point of the terrible sword. The crowd laughed, some gleeful catcalls, before silence grew again.

Shiro centered himself. His feet on the sand, knees bent, grounded but light; he'd be slower to dodge on this footing so he had to be ready to fall and roll instead. He extended the sword at waist height, flat of the blade supported by his left palm in a modified horizontal guard, and along with it extended his awareness. Feeling the arena, the sand, the pillars, the walls, the hushed audience, the opponent; you couldn't close yourself off, you had to reach out to really fight, meet them closer than skin on skin. He'd always liked the ai-ki parts of sparring as well as the kiai parts, though no surprise it felt a little sharper if your opponent wasn't sparring. Shiro wondered if he could kill, if he could deliver a fatal blow at full strength or if he'd hesitate. A bit late to be worrying about that, he suspected.

The psych evals always said he could, but they said nothing about being able to live with the person that killing would turn him into. And the psych evals weren't always right.

Oh well. If no one bothered to tell him the arena rules, they had no right to complain how he won.

Myzax was done letting him grandstand; since Shiro was being a nice stationary target, Myzax was going to take it. He held up his staff, and a crackling orb of pink lightning spun up in it, making a whine Shiro could hear even from this distance. Myzax made a lazy circle with his staff, another, then lobbed the orb with a deceptively effortless extension.

Not at Shiro, though; it went far wide, between the pillars out to Shiro's left. Shiro drifted forward between his own pillars and considered making a charge on Myzax now, before he could spin up another orb.

He never heard the first one hit the walls, though — and the audience was clamoring, Myzax' grin stretching wide — Shiro pivoted away from Myzax and lunged into a deep forward stance on instinct, bringing the sword up at an angle to block the energy orb before it could hit him in the back. It whanged into him and deformed against the blade, then bounced up high over his head, shrieking like the release valve on a pressure cooker. Myzax held out the staff and the orb curved in midair, changing trajectory to home back to him and be caught on the staff.

Shiro stumbled back into guard. It had felt like blocking with a dumbbell, and his left hand trembled and buzzed where the lightning had shocked him through the bare blade. His feet had left half-meter-long furrows, only the deepness of his stance keeping him from being knocked down. Whatever was controlling that orb, it hit hard — and as terrible as this loaner sword was, anything lighter would have broken.

The crowd was screaming, notes of excitement and demented delight. Myzax didn't wait for the noise to ebb or for Shiro to recover; he wound up and launched the orb immediately, harder and faster this time, like a major-league pitcher done with warmup.

Shiro leapt and rolled for the safety of the pillar on his right. He fetched up against it and felt the orb's impact through the stone, its whine fracturing into dozens like malevolent bees. Sparks and stone fragments whizzed past him, and something small clipped his ear and pinned his overshirt flat to his shoulder. He slipped around to the other side, keeping his steps silent. His ear was bleeding hot down his neck. He couldn't tell if his shoulder was hurt, but given that it was his sword arm, he'd find out pretty soon. As before, Myzax pulled the orb back and lobbed it immediately, without waiting, even though he hadn't spotted Shiro yet.

Shiro breathed, stayed in cover, adjusted his grip, and when the orb whizzed past on its circuit around the pillar he smacked it with the sword like it was a tennis ball.

He could change its momentum, all right. The orb went in a hard near-straight line and dug a long curving trench in the sand before it slowed enought for Myzax to call it back. Shiro waited, but the next attack didn't come, and didn't come.

A deep thrum, a throbbing in the air — the sound when Myzax had first formed the orb. Shiro snuck a look amid sudden visions of the next round having _two_ of them. Only one still, thank god. Its pitch had dropped over the last two exchanges, and now it was rising back toward the original tone. 

Myzax was charging it up. He had to keep sending it out until it was depleted, and then it was stuck with him until it charged up.

Shiro threaded his hand through the wrist guard and fit the sword snug against his arm, the long pommel extending past his elbow. Right now, in the middle of the fight and before he wore down, it felt light. He had to use that. His other hand would be free for balance and for bare-handed techniques, but two-handed blocks with his left hand supporting the sword would be harder with his right forearm locked in.

Shiro breathed once more, extended his ki as wide around him as he could, and left cover in a full sprint, zigzagging toward Myzax. The audience roared and Myzax reared back in surprise; this close Shiro could tell his eyes had horizontal pupils, like a goat. He'd have very wide peripheral vision, then, and he was _very_ tall, four meters or more. Even with the sword, any target higher than his mid-chest was out of easy reach.

Myzax recovered, eyes narrowing, but didn't take any stance Shiro recognized. He held out the staff, orb toward Shiro, and then Shiro was on him.

Block the staff aside. Spin to the right; try to hook the opponent's hand in the sword's crescent tip, failing that, try to hook the staff away. The sword scraped along the staff but didn't catch.

Shiro pivoted on his right leg, keeping the momentum of the spin, then shifted to his left in the instant his back was to Myzax and put the force into a full thrusting back kick. His right heel drove into Myzax' knee. Instead of disengaging there Shiro twisted and let his foot come down, lunging deeper into his opponent's space, and let the sword finish its full 360° swing by intersecting with Myzax' arm again.

This time, with all the stacked momentum of that sweep behind it, the crescent tip caught and ripped his opponent from elbow to wrist, flattening his staff arm to his body and glancing across his belly and the thigh of his other leg. Myzax bellowed and released the orb. It whizzed down into the sand somewhere behind Shiro.

_Woop._ Shiro dropped, diving to the left, staying on Myzax' weak side and hoping his knee kick had done some damage. He rolled and came up again just in time to block the orb, catching air in a second unplanned roll when it knocked him off his feet. Up again, spitting sand. He was getting backed dangerously close to the arena wall.

The orb was back with Myzax, who wasn't holding the staff up anymore; it dangled, pointing down, and Myzax was having trouble turning to aim. His leg wouldn't take his weight. Myzax snarled and grabbed the staff with his other hand, twisting to lob the orb clumsily at Shiro.

Shiro drifted aside and the orb dug itself into the arena wall. He sprang back into range and swung the sword high at Myzax' mid-back, in an area that looked like it had less padding. The sword's hooked tip dug in and ripped up one side of the armor plate, leaving it flapping loose under Myzax' injured arm, and Myzax bellowed again, this time with a note of pain under the rage.

Shiro spun away, checking the orb, wondering if he could get around Myzax so the orb was on the other side. To decoy Myzax' own weapon into hitting him, he'd have to get control of the staff or knock it away—

Myzax pivoted to track him but not fast enough, leaving his back leg unguarded. Shiro was moving to take the opening before he saw it consciously, sword's tip completing an arc deep into the back of the opponent's other knee, crescent tip slicing the tendons. A maiming, permanently disabling strike. Not easy but not as hard as it ought to be; the psych evals were right after all. Satisfaction and sorrow blew through him, neither emotion worth more or less in the middle of a fight.

As Myzax fell, he twisted and swept his staff around like a club. It came out of Shiro's peripheral vision and took him in the mid-ribs on his right side. 

Shiro felt the impact and a moment of weightlessness, the blow knocking him through the air.

He went down, rolling but only coming back to his knees instead of all the way up. He couldn't quite breathe. If he hadn't managed a partial glancing block with the sword's long pommel, that hit could have crushed his chest. As it was, his whole right side was white static and the ghost-shock of impact; he couldn't tell how much damage was underneath, building up the pain he couldn't feel yet. Some ribs were likely broken, and if he had a punctured lung he'd have to win very fast. That, or Myzax might just have taken back the match with a single decisive blow.

_No._

Shiro got a full breath. Myzax had one shot left. He had to find the orb.

Myzax was stretched full-length on his side, serrated teeth bared and goat eyes narrow with pain. He was watching Shiro but holding the staff with both hands and angling it off to the other side to retrieve the orb, which dug a slow and lazy furrow out of the arena wall and back toward them.

Shiro pulled his hand out of the wrist guard and drove the tip of the terrible sword into the sand, using it to lever himself up. On his feet, he took it up in a two-handed grip like a baseball bat, feet wide, tip low. The crowd noise was all just one continuous sound.

Myzax snarled and used all the strength left in his good arm to flip the orb at Shiro one last time. It came hard and straight, shrieking like a bottle rocket.

Shiro set his shoulders, stepped in, and hit it back with the flat of the blade. The motion hurt his entire torso, dull fire from his muscles and sharp agony from his ribs, sparking up from under the white fuzz of shock. He swung at full strength anyway, not caring if the sword broke.

Myzax saw the orb coming and made an aborted block. The orb hit the underside of the cup on the staff, shattered it, drove Myzax' head backward into the sand with an awful crunch, and then exploded apart into an unravelling vortex of fat pink lightning bolts. They danced outward over the sand, making Myzax' body jump and Shiro fumble the sword when it shocked his hands.

He caught the sword. Waited three breaths in the shocked silence while Myzax lay limp as a rag doll, then hefted the sword up like a fifty-kilo weight.

"My win!" Shiro shouted. The crowd screamed. There were smashing noises, thumping noises that resolved into a rhythm, three beats repeated.

_CHAM-PI-ON CHAM-PI-ON CHAM-PI-ON_

Myzax was still unmoving, probably unconscious, unless the impact to the head or those lightning bolts had killed him. Shiro dropped the tip of the sword and leaned on it again, gasping for breath and starting to tremble in delayed reaction.

The hatch Myzax had come through opened, and two sentries stepped out. Shiro's head came up. Only two? He glanced at his own hatch, far down at the other end, and yes, there were at least four coming from that side.

But on this side there were only two, and he had a weapon. He had a weapon. He couldn't fight them barehanded, but he wouldn't be. He had a chance to fight.

The rush of adrenaline made the lightheadedness recede again, made the edges of things pop with vibrant color and made him able to ignore the heavy buzzing certainty of something wrong in his right chest. This anger was bigger than his body, the part that would be fear turned to unexpected elation. He might not get this chance again, but he knew he wasn't operating on strategy right now and he didn't care.

The crowd noise redoubled when he yanked the sword up and attacked, disarming one sentry before it could aim, lining them up so the other couldn't quite target him and had to go around. With the sword he had reach longer than their arms, and the rage singing through him made it feel light again.

The first sentry crumpled — whoops, that exposed hip joint was a weakness after all, and they couldn't survive half their head removed either. He kicked it toward its partner, tangling them together.

He wouldn't win. But before they took this sword back, he was going to learn all about how to take them down.

* * *

The sidearms had a lasso-like immobilization mode, he found out five or so sentry carcasses later. If he'd known that he would have stolen one and used it, but as it was the remaining sentries and their reinforcements coordinated well. One pink cord wrapped around his knee and caught the calf of the other leg, breaking his stride, while a second cord wrapped him full in the chest and pulled the opposite direction. He lost the sword when he hit the ground, all his senses wiped out by pain for a moment as his back and side took the impact.

They dragged him toward them across the sand. _Go limp. Just go limp. Stop fighting now._ Things were wavering in and out, black spots in his vision, but he'd been wanting to fight for so long. He didn't want to give it up.

The hand on his neck was warm and blue-furred, a real guard. Shiro twisted and bit as hard as he could, getting a satisfying taste of blood before something dealt him a ringing blow to the side of the head and things got muddled for a few minutes. Hands on his skull and jaw that he fought ineffectively, something plastic-tacky pushed between his teeth and pulled tight to his face and around the back of his neck. Shiro tried to open his mouth and couldn't. He snarled, an even more animalistic sound around the muzzle.

Something else wrapped around his face, blocking the light. Blocking the _sound_ where it went over his ears, like his head had gone in a perfectly insulated box, nullifying everything. Shiro yelled through the muzzle and heard it only faraway through the bones of his skull, like he was down in deep water. He could hear his heart beating panic-fast, his joints creaking. He couldn't hear anything else. Sensory deprivation.

_Relax. Relax. They'll hit you and you can't prepare. Roll with it._

He could still breathe. If he was careful he could breathe through his mouth too, even with the obstructions and the gag holding down his tongue. He panted and tried to stay surrendered.

There were at least three sets of hands on him — sentries, no more or less hard than usual. They didn't hold grudges against him for killing their fellows, but they were taking no chances as they got his wrists manacled behind his back.

The arm around his neck was softer, armor over muscle instead of metal, and this guard was definitely holding a grudge. Shiro would have snarled again but his pulse was pounding in his head, the blood choke getting to him.

The guard dropped him face-first on the sand, the muzzle hitting him painfully in the bridge of his nose. Shiro turned his head and curled up, injured side to the ground to protect it, all too aware of their feet on a level with his head and spine and gut. Surreally, he could feel the crowd noise vibrating through the sand, the three-beat chant still going. He could guess what was coming.

The shockrod blows made him arch and writhe. He screamed dim and muffled for the first two, but his diaphragm seized up on the last and it was a long minute before he could get any breath at all. The pain was huge, overwhelming, wiping out thought and everything else. He couldn't assign a number to it, couldn't even try.

(...He'd stopped thinking that way, facing the Druids. To survive them, all pains had to be the same, none worse or better than any other. _It hurts,_ he told himself, and _I know. I know. It hurts. Breathe._ )

Head slipping sideways. Being dragged. Feet dragging through sand, then over deck plating. Turns, but he had no chance of tracking them; his inner ear insisted he was spinning in place, the same kinaesthetic illusion from the sense-dep capsule when he was training for Kerberos.

His face hurt. They had him under the arms, and by the overshirt, and by the strap on the muzzle, and they weren't quite all stepping in synch. The goddamn guard was still mad at him. If Shiro had it to do over, he'd bite harder. He was still trembling and jittering, nervous system shorted out and only partly back online. His back and side hurt like dull-hot cannonballs were embedded in his skin, high under his arm and below his shoulderblade, uncomfortably close to where a sentry's hand looped under his arm and fastened on the ball of his shoulder. The convulsions from the shockrod would not have helped his broken ribs.

A pause; the spinning illusion intensified. Shiro breathed through it, like he had in the capsule. Longer than a couple hours and he'd get visual and auditory hallucinations too.

Moving again, his feet dragging and thudding down a couple steps. The guard's hand on the strap at the back of his head let go and the sentries turned him face up, then hefted him onto a familiar table and clicked his wrists into place behind and underneath. Shiro tried to lift his head, not liking his neck exposed, and gave up at the nauseous wrench the effort required. His back and side stabbed with every breath.

Straps going around him, distantly. Blood in his mouth. Maybe he was getting noisy from sputtering on it. It was a little harder to breathe, horizontal on his back. That might become a problem, pretty soon.

Anger, near him. Today's anger and a deeper, despairing anger at all the waste.

Hands on his temples and face; the same exam as yesterday, but faster and curtailed around the muzzle. Throat, neck, spine. Surprise that Shiro had no fight in him.

Cold air on his chest and back. The medic knew exactly how to unzip these jumpsuits, all right. Hands on his high ribs, curving around his right side under his arm, where it _hurt._ Shiro made a noise and tried to flinch away.

The anger — someone else's anger? — was gone, suddenly, tamped down and subsumed into clicking logic chains. The hands were not gentle, but they were lighter than he expected, cool against the swelling and bruising. They pressed and Shiro felt bone grate as something shifted, and the liquid pain was more real than anything else for a minute. His eyes rolled up in his head under the blindfold, and he lost the thread of awareness.

When he came back he coughed wetly, just once, and stifled the ones that wanted to come after. Stifled the giggles too, even though the thought of drowning on his own blood somewhere in interstellar space from a punctured lung and a muzzle was abruptly very funny. Pain endorphins and hypoxia.

He didn't want to die here, though. He wanted to die doing something. 

Sam had ordered him to stay alive to warn Earth. Matt had tried to make him promise.

...He wasn't sure that warning Earth would make any difference at all. He'd seen the audience out there in the arena, enough of a glimpse to grasp the scale. _Hundreds_ of species, countless variations, and an Empire that ruled them all. What could Earth do against that?

He wanted to do something that would make a difference.

A sense of motion and activity, very distant now. Rotation...? His weight lifted from his back and settled against the straps; he was back upright or mostly upright. _Don't cough. Don't cough._ Movement again, like the table could slide backwards. A sudden sense of enclosure. Cold. Pins and needles. _Cold._

He reached out, wondering _what_ , and for a second saw the energy, the trails of lights; a wide dark horizon and a strange sky above. Then the cold numbed his thoughts away.

* * *

_You're one-third of all Earth's chances too, Matt._

_If our lives are equal and you're in imminent danger, I can't not protect you. I can't._

_That's what they chose me for._

* * *

When the new Champion was brought in and left in the one-win grid nearest to the door, he was so calm that at first Junichy thought he'd been sedated. Rumor said he was drugged senseless at intake processing, and he had been to see Medic since his first fight. His jumpsuit was flopping open, a patch of clean new wrappings showing through the ragged neck of his overshirt.

This Champion's first fight, Myzax' last fight. He'd taken the title on his first fight. Unbelievable.

Rumor also said this Champion had sabotaged the holding cell for the zeros, clubbed one sentry with the arm of the other, and gotten them all an extra ration of food. That seemed unlikely. But the rumors agreed on an even more unlikely truth, that every one of his culling's zero-fighters were still alive, caught up in the bright corona of his victory and slipped away from death.

She traded looks with Oosn one grid over in the six-wins, and saw Sssss'h's tendrils perk alertly in the three-wins, their grid backing along the same wall. They ran a tendril up to the very boundary line as she watched, the better to sense pulse and respiration of other life-forms not so suited to ambush.

Champion tensed, though. He could sense the threat that even now only prediction and practice let her see. His win was not an accident. Junichy slapped the floor in glee, for he was muzzled and his ears and eyes blocked by one of the druids' veils, and he would know nothing of where he was but the deck under him and the wall at his back. But he certainly knew they were there.

He was small, roughly the size of a child of her own people, though he had the proportions of an adult. His skin was as light as a cave worm, and had the pink undertones of red blood. Unlike the black-on-black of her own coloring, it would be very apparent when he was injured. His hair at least was properly dark, though still not a true black, and a shock of it was growing in white as it might on someone very old.

The longer he was left alone, the less calm he seemed, surface showing the roil underneath. He felt the wall and the floor, hitched himself to one side imperceptibly slowly — the side closer the door and away from Sssss'h — breathed louder, deep and rough, threw himself on his back and bent his body backwards through the circle of his arms.

"Get stuck!" Oosn said. The Champion did not get stuck.

"He's better able to bend than most," Junichy allowed as the Champion drew his second leg through, his bound arms now at the front, and worked immediately at the knots of the veil, movements urgent as though he feared someone would stop him.

_Bones are stupid,_ said Sssss'h, waving lazily. From them, that was positively friendly. _Bones break, crackle snap,_ they continued, miming it gruesomely. Junichy averted her eyes. She was familiar with Sssss'h's favorite topics.

The new Champion stripped off the veil and saw them all watching, even Vrenn and the Mother down in the tens-wins grid, scarred by proximity to the end of the room. He squinted at them and at the faded lines on the floor, and his hands did not stop working at the muzzle until it came away. He wrapped the veil around it and tossed it at the door, outside of his grid.

Then and only then, deed done, he wiped his mouth on his shoulder and asked rough-voiced "Will that get you in trouble?" Then coughed into his elbow, coughed harder, and touched his side in apparent surprise.

"Would you put them back on?" Junichy said, curiosity ever the death of her.

"No," Champion said. He had strange high-contrast eyes, wide black pupils on white sclera. His gaze was piercing and wild, with a rocksteady weight behind it that would make her rethink her intentions, had she any. 

"No," Junichy said, satisfied. "They watch us all. Your actions fall on you. Maybe they wanted you to suffer for destroying sentries, but even they know a fighter needs to drink after a fight." She was seated already at the corner between her grid, the four-wins, and his; she nudged forward the sealed drink powder and the bowl, empty but clean. "So these are for you to keep."

He looked at them like he'd never seen such things before. "Why?"

"Myzax had sixty-four wins," Junichy said, trilling the clicks.

"Forty-nine of those undefeated," Oosn took up. "His victory mounded high!"

"As high as the bodies of those he killed," said the Mother, "and the shadow he cast was death. We did not appreciate being housed with him."

"Oh," said Champion. "He hurt you?"

"He hurt," Junichy shrugged, dipping her ears, "he maimed, he killed outside the ring, if he thought a fighter was too strong. We learned to be weak here in Eleven-block. Now we can forget our learnings again." She grinned, showing teeth.

Champion pushed himself up with his palms against the wall. Standing, he let go of the wall and touched his side again, then came forward, watching Sssss'h warily, though he dropped his stance lower when Junichy shifted just to see if he was watching her too. 

She held still, grinning wider. He stopped well out of her reach and sat, then hooked the bowl and packet with one foot and drew it toward himself. Up close, his pupils were round and ringed with dark-on-dark as if in emphasis, and changed size slightly as he looked at the gifts. So he was not such a cave creature as she had thought, and would not have been blinded in the ring. Good.

The bowl was sturdy and unbreakable, but not unbeautiful. He turned it over and over in his bound hands and poked curiously at the sealed packet before looking up, head turning to take in all of them. "I fought him for my own reasons, but I'm glad—" he broke off and coughed again. "—Glad other good came of it. I accept — gift for — favor already rendered. With thanks."

Junichy sat back. "Nicely said. You can fill it there, at the necessary." She nodded at the corner closest the door, outside the grids. "Two rules the Galra enforce in this room. We must use the necessary only one at a time, and we must keep to our own grids all other times. You also see that those with more wins must walk through the lower grids on their trips. Fighting to injury is allowed with anyone who is in the same grid as you, but death is punished, because it wastes an arena fight."

Champion considered the layout of the grids. "It favors — the far end."

"Yes; the higher-ranked can choose their time, while those of us down here must be on the defensive. But you and the two-wins can reach the necessary without fighting anyone. And since two-wins is empty, we have the option of going around you."

He laughed, and levered himself back up. "Where's the — fun in that? But I'll — go first."

Standing, he picked up the bowl and walked with measured steps, neither fast nor slow, aware of their eyes. One arm was clamped flat and protective to his side, though Medic would not have cleared him without healing him enough to fight again within a cycle. It must have been a severe injury for him to be so unsure of it still.

At the spigot he washed his manacled hands and his face and rinsed out his mouth, spitting dark into the drain, then drank long and single-mindedly, stopping only for a coughing fit that made him wrap both arms around himself, head down, checking every few seconds that none of them had moved. When it was over he washed his face and mouth again and filled the bowl, bringing it back. 

Back in his grid, he sat against the wall. He seemed to be eased, and his breathing did not have the rattling any more. Sssss'h withdrew their tendril, discomfited, and sulked in the exact center of their grid.

"Do you know what's in this powder?" the Champion asked, stirring a little in with his finger.

"Sugar, salts. No stimulants. We are allowed no drugs at all here."

He gestured with his shoulders, the translator whispering _acceptance, irony,_ in her mind, and sipped. "It's good," he said, and betrayed no concern about poison.

"Does all your species have the vestigial ears?"

"Vestigial?" he said, surprised. "Compared to yours, ah, yes. I suppose so. Some people can move them, but I can't."

"A pity," Junichy said, flicking her own ears. "Ears are expressive. The translators only catch body language if it is very broad. That is partly why Sssss'h is such a blight, having to shout baby talk to be understood. Though having made such an effort, they could at least say something worth listening to."

Sssss'h flicked a gesture that none of them, now, required a translation for.

"How do the translators work?"

"The translators? I do not know."

"Translators are an old technology," Oosn said. "Thousands of years. The field causes specific resonance between the auras of beings with sentient quintessence. How do you not know that?"

Champion bared his teeth, a flash of viciousness. "Assume I know nothing."

Sssss'h found that delightful, tendrils knotting in laughter. Champion looked over, his edge of threat vanishing in amusement, then focused back on Oosn with the second of what they would find to be many questions indeed. "Quintessence?"

* * *

Junichy went first, testing the newest one of them in this room. He had eaten a ration bar that he seemed surprised to discover he still had, then curled against the wall and slumped in real exhaustion and apparent sleep. She stood soundlessly, brushing back her queue and padding into the two-wins grid, then breaking left with a handspring roll that propelled her foot with a thump into the wall where the Champion's midriff had been. And no longer was.

She'd lost sight of him during the split-second of her roll. On instinct she kicked back off the wall and rolled backwards up to her feet, gaining distance, arms up and ready to block.

Champion's foot landed on the inside of her back knee as his elbow clipped her temple and then his bound arms settled around her neck, just under her jaw. He was holding his center of gravity out far behind her, precision making up for his lack of height, and with her stance broken she could not stay standing. She accepted the fall, angling to land on him, but the Champion controlled it, smoothly taking both their weights down to his hip and transferring his foot to her back for a thrust kick and a low "Ha!" that propelled her skidding into the far wall.

She caught her breath. He was on his shoulders, head just short of the line and one foot extended over it; he drew back and rolled to standing as she watched, not needing his hands. She was back in the two-wins grid. She brushed herself off with dignity, resettled her queue, and continued on her way, feeling the weight of a number of thoughtful eyes. Not since she was learning her trade had someone ended a bout with her so quickly and neatly.

By unspoken agreement they left him alone for the rest of that sleep.

* * *

Oosn attempted him second, the next time the Champion appeared asleep, with similar results to Junichy. She watched, and noted that although Champion had more difficulty unbalancing someone with six limbs, he was fast to adapt and very, very good at throws. He was also not above dealing minor injury to get the throw faster. Oosn nursed his temple and an upper elbow, washing at the spigot and checking the food lockers in forlorn hope for an early refill, then swung wide around the one-wins grid on his way back.

Vrenn was never interested in the short bouts. He slept, as he usually did between matches, and when he lumbered to the necessary, folding himself low to fit under the ceiling, they all got out of his way. The Mother was more direct; on her way for her once-in-seven-cycles drink, she rolled her long body through the one-wins grid in a manner that would have crushed even Vrenn against the wall.

The Champion vaulted over her, twice, staying neatly within his lines, and wisely did not attempt to engage. None of them could get through her armor without a weapon. She clacked her mandibles in a compliment, took her drink, and went back to the tight-packed coil that she and Vrenn had arranged to fit them both into their grid, while Champion stood and peered after her from the very corner of the one-wins with something like delighted awe.

He exercised at length, as they all did, filling the time. Most of his exercises were simple and similar to her own, repeated motions to strengthen specific muscles, but he had some very long sequences which were somewhere between ritual dance and a memorized reenactment of a fight. Junichy watched and wished his hands were free, that she could follow the fight-story better.

She could see the dance calmed him, and the translators made almost-words of some of it. Sssss'h, more sensitive than any here, stretched out their tendrils long and parallel and basked, keeping by a mere sliver to their side of the line between three-wins and one. Their silence was a balm.

Champion danced for a very long time, and though he closed his eyes for long stretches of the dance, he never stepped out of his lines.

* * *

"How likely are we to fight each other?" Champion asked after the food lockers had been refilled, today's order of precedence had been established with savage haste, and most of them were dozing to savor the pleasure of being full. "Will they make me fight one of you next time?"

Junichi shrugged, dipping her ears. "It is possible, but our numbers are low for that — a block-room this size is meant to hold twenty or thirty, multiple fighters in each grid. We are six, and there are ten other blocks not so cruelly winnowed as we were. So if we fight in the ring, little Champion, it will likely be only to blood, and almost a shame it would be to win against you so soon. You have done a shining thing!" She slapped her thigh, remembering how they had listened incredulously to the audio shipcast. "What an upset!"

Champion shook his head. "I can't promise that he's dead. Myzax might come right back through that door and harass you again."

"He will not," the Mother said, ponderously rubbing her midmost segment against the floor in the far tens-wins grid. With her nineteen wins, she would be planning to molt as soon as she could move one up into the twenty-plus wins, Myzax' former grid, twice as big as all the others. "It was his fiftieth fight undefeated. Vrepit sa."

"He had...most unwisely declared that for fifty wins the Druids owed him another favor, a _better_ favor, but by an accident of the numbers, you broke his streak first," Junichy explained. "Therefore, dead or alive, they have claimed him entire. They do not give up what they take."

The Champion hugged his legs with his arms and was silent a while, paler than usual. "I remember the crowd chanting that. Vrepit sa, victory or death."

"Usually just one is enough. The Galra know that they would be out of skilled fighters very soon if all matches were death matches, and even the arena palls, if all matches are between desperate and short-lived amateurs." 

Champion tilted his head, acknowledging that, though from his expression the thought did not give him any pleasure.

"Victory and death," Junichy repeated, mind turning down well-worn tracks. "Zarkon's motto, that nothing but victory or death can stop him. And he has been victorious for a long, long time!" She flicked one ear up and one down in silent laughter echoed by most of the others.

"Victory and death! The one the obverse of the other, so the only true life and growth, I say, is in failure. For this heresy was I sentenced to fight." She grinned. "Where I fail at my peril."

The Champion rolled his dark pupils up under his eyelids, an odd and entertaining gesture that the translators refused to parse.

"But here in the pens," Junichy said more seriously, "at last we can speak our minds. What worse could happen to us, that will not happen anyway?"

The Champion opened and closed his right hand, watching the movement of his fingers, then asked "Zarkon?"

* * *

On the next match day guards came for him, of course. Interest would be high; the bookies would have analyzed his earlier fight and any footage from this room that their watchers released, and most would still be convinced his first win was a fluke.

Champion did not seem surprised either. He woke before the door opened, sitting up and watching it, and when three sentries came in his only motion was a shudder.

There were six sentries altogether, besides the Galra guard: three to cover the rest of the room and three just to attend to him. They had the numbers and the leverage, and one got him in a headlock while the others held him flat on the floor and re-cuffed his hands behind his back. He bared his teeth but did not fight them until one of them stood to pick up the muzzle and veil, lying abandoned near the door all this time, and washed them at the spigot. 

"Save it for the ring," the Galra guard advised.

"I'm not an animal," Champion hissed, working against the two sentries holding him down. The one at his head had needed to hurriedly brace with its free hand to avoid getting flipped.

"You're a possibly-valuable slave that is known to bite," the guard said.

"Wouldn't you?" Champion threw out, then clamped his teeth shut as a sentry took hold of his jaw and pressed, trying to get fingers in his mouth.

Galra had fine sharp teeth that the guard showed now. "A valid point. That's why you get the muzzle and I get to make conversation with a limited AI."

"Always engaging, sir," one of the sentries said.

"The highlight of my every day," replied the guard, nodding and handing the muzzle back to them, then shaking out the veil to inspect it too. It was absolutely nonreflective, as black as a hole in the world. "Extra care with this fighter. No damage unless absolutely unavoidable."

"You'll go to Medic first," Junichy told Champion in a rapid undertone. "He'll check your healing, clear you to fight, and certify no interference. Fight well."

"Fight well," the others added, a ragged chorus. The Mother rapped two mid-legs against her shell, _toc toc_.

Champion looked as much as he could at all of them and dipped his eyes, acknowledging.

He refused to open his mouth for the muzzle, and the sentries did not risk damaging his teeth or jaw by forcing him. Instead, one pinched his nose shut and entirely covered his mouth with its wide metal palm. White showed all around his eyes, but he held out for seven of Junichy's breaths before struggling in earnest, thumping and kicking against the floor, whole body thrashing strongly and then weakly under the sentries holding him down.

The one blocking his air waited until his eyelids were fluttering and neck had gone loose before uncovering just his mouth. Champion whooped in air, loud and hoarse, and the sentry slipped the gag in and the muzzle on while he was still dazed. He blinked and panted, great breaths whistling through the holes in the muzzle.

The guard put the veil on himself, folding it to fit Champion's face and adjusting the ties to be sure it wouldn't slip. They heard Champion's breathing get louder when he couldn't hear himself, and they all watched his posture slowly loosen, losing the tense focus of before with nothing to focus on. The effect was like sedation or surrender, and the guard was pleased.

Junichy cocked her head, one ear up and one down, and grinned. It looked more like the middle of Champion's fighting-dance to her. Clearly, not her place to tell.

* * *

It was more than two cycles before they brought him back, dumping him in the two-wins grid and again leaving without removing the cuffs, muzzle, or veil. He had been healed again, to be gone so long, and had misbehaved again, to be punished that way. He lay in a heap and did not stir, even when Junichy stepped close to their now-shared line to watch him, and Sssss'h crowded into the corner where three-wins touched two. Champion breathed, but that was all; the muzzle and veil made him expressionless.

Sssss'h crept over the lines. They had not fed since their last match. Junichy tensed, but watched. No bout would be fair with Champion still veiled; she would interfere to keep it nonlethal. Sssss'h was not a paragon of self-restraint.

Champion sensed the threat and stirred at last, rolling onto his side and getting one elbow on the floor. His arms were cuffed in front this time, wrist to elbow with the extended magnetic cuffs that Medic preferred for long-term restraint. They rolled freely around each other so that he could twist his forearms and put either one in front, but with only his fingertips free Junichy doubted he could reach behind his own head to take off the veil or the muzzle himself. If he was not to die of thirst, this time someone else would have to help him.

Most would agree that such favors required an exchange. Even here, Champion was right to be wary.

* * *

Shiro knew he was skipping, badly. The feeling of spinning had mostly faded, but he could hear voices — just whispering so far, no words — usually the Druids or their mistress, but sometimes Sam. Sometimes Matt, and he could nearly make them out, something important they were trying to tell him...

He had been seeing colors too, for a while, swarming dots and splotches and nothing more structured yet. He could remember the brightness of the arena during his second fight, the color and smell of his opponent's blood, the look on her face as he dealt the blow that killed her, but it was a memory and not a sense-dep hallucination, not yet. Give it another few hours.

He had killed another thinking being for being so skilled she caught him by surprise, and so committed that he'd chosen, in that split-second, to escalate. He had his answer. He hadn't hesitated to choose lethal force.

He couldn't blame Sam for that, couldn't say he was just following the order to survive. It had been his own decision. He could have tried a nonlethal counter. It might have worked.

The match itself had been very short, but he'd held out longer against the sentries this time. The ones down on the sand with him had been armed only with shockrods, no sidearms, and it was their fellows shooting from up on the wall that finally brought him down again with their wrapping cords.

Shockrods had an effect on sentries as well, it turned out. He hadn't been crazy to think that their pink crackle had more in common with the Druid's techniques than with the electricity he knew. They disrupted the flow of energy, and everything on this ship ran on the same energy. The same energy that he could swear he'd felt slow and stop in the person he'd killed.

It hurt, an all-pervasive grinding pain the medic's treatments couldn't touch. But Shiro couldn't undo it.

Since then it had been about ten or twenty hours of the silent dark, broken by sentries' hands on him and another session of being shut in the cold place and hurting less afterward, and at one point a frantic aborted scuffle with someone else also blindfolded and cuffed, and just as happy as Shiro to declare a silent truce once they figured that out.

Two sentries had given him water, if it counted to hold his head still and poke a straw through a hole in the muzzle until he'd figured out what was going on. He'd managed to suck and swallow around the gag without losing too much, but that was hours ago, and thirst was gumming his mouth and pounding in his head again now.

It was getting harder to tell apart kindnesses from cruelties. He'd take more water, though, if he could get it.

He seemed to be blanking out a lot. The blindfold, or lingering shock from the fight, or both. His surroundings kept changing without notice, being on the floor one moment and marched by two sentries the next, and now here. A big space. Familiar presences, all keeping a certain distance, though in a different orientation. He was probably back in the pen.

Maybe he'd always had this extra layer of perception and never noticed, never used it except when he sparred. Maybe it was a side effect of aura damage, or something deliberate the Druids' mistress had done to him. Or something he'd done to himself over the long painstaking weeks of piecing himself back together. He'd had some hours to consider all the possibilities, and he'd decided that he didn't care.

This ability to feel others' ki, not just as a daydream or a useful mental construct but as a sense relaying external information — if it was as real as the blanket currently wrapped around him, the blanket that glowed in a muted forest of greens even with his eyes closed and made these hours of silence and dark bearable when he dared to take it out, then it was real _enough_. He'd use it.

Their feelings almost had colors too. Worry on his left. Below his feet, near-mindless hunger, opportunity, temptation. Decision. Intent.

Shit.

Shiro vanished the blanket, heart hammering with sudden adrenaline, and rolled to get a little more space. Something wrapped his ankle and he kicked, connecting with nothing. It wasn't strong enough to pull his leg out straight, but it distracted him and then something else — two of them — wrapped his neck and pulled his head back.

He kicked and thrashed — _black worms under his skin, in his mouth_ — but they were curved wide around him, out of reach of his bound arms. He'd have a chance without the blindfold, but here and now, he wasn't going to win this bout. He stopped struggling but stayed wire-tense, free leg drawn up and ready.

This was his neighbor, the one who looked like an anemone and communicated through sign language and whose name sounded like waves foaming on rock, the one he hadn't fought yet. What did they want?

They felt like _hunger_. Shiro tried to locate the central mass. Too bad he couldn't sense the tendrils before they touched him. He'd seen his neighbor thin them out to two or three meters long, and that would be the smart way to fight Shiro now, to tire him out while staying outside his reach. 

The tendrils around his neck weren't squeezing or trying to choke him, but one found his pulse and stung, a sudden sharp zinging pain. Shiro gasped and flipped himself backwards, kicking out in a wide crescent above his head. If he could sweep his leg to intersect the tendrils, if he could stomp them or get some leverage to pull them off... They evaded, or he was kicking in the wrong direction entirely, and a wave of weakness turned his muscles to water and flattened him out again. The side of his face was numb, up to his ear and spreading down through his shoulder, and his legs were tingling and shaky. Shiro pushed against the floor and couldn't get enough traction to move. He should have known someone who looked like an anemone would have venom.

Probably not deadly, though, or they wouldn't use it here. Shiro dug his nails into his palms, metering his breathing. His heart was racing, but panic would just make him helpless faster.

The tendrils at his neck shifted and extended, feeling over the back of his head. The blindfold loosened.

Shiro went still.

The tendrils worked into his hair under the blindfold, loosening it more, not untying it so much as shucking it off. With a last push and a pop it was free, and he could hear the desperate edge of his own breathing and the ambient hum of air in the room. Shiro shook his head hard to get it off his face.

Bright bright bright, even the dimness of this room was eye-wateringly bright after so long. The lights blurred into vibrant pink smears. Shiro squinted and found his neighbor's central mass off to his left, well outside of reach, tendrils that were almost always in motion now predatorily still and colormatched to the dark gray floor. Except for two, that moved in exaggerated loops and twines for him to follow.

_I removed the veil. Now you owe me a favor,_ they said. _I will feed on your energy while I remove the muzzle. You will not die of thirst and I will not die of hunger here in the cold and hard._

Shiro blinked. He was being told, not asked. Only intelligible words could make it through the translators; he snarled through the muzzle, doubting they would understand the carnivore-mammal- _vertebrate_ display.

His neighbor drifted closer. _You are not stupid, and you shimmer like sun-dapples on the coral. My feeding will not hurt and will not damage you._ Two more tendrils twined over his ankles, holding his legs in place without trying to pull them straight. _I can give you pleasure. I can sense where it runs close to the surface, under your skin. Do you want that?_

Shiro shook his head _no_ , as broadly as he could.

All the tendrils undulated once — _irony, acceptance_. Their own version of a shrug. _I can take your pain,_ they said, and tapped his right arm, the one that always ached down in the bone. _Your flows are scarred here. I can speed your healing. Do you want that?_

Shiro hesitated.

His sense of feeling and intent was still there, he thought, though so greatly muted under sight and sound that he couldn't be sure. He didn't think his neighbor was deceiving him, didn't think he would be agreeing to more than the initial bargain. It wasn't really informed and wasn't really consent, but by the standards of the prisoners they could have taken first and explained later, if at all. They were giving him this chance to think. They were trying.

This person had chosen to come after him while he was defenseless. Had stung him. Had scared him. This person was not really going to give Shiro the option of saying no. But they were trying to balance the interaction into something a little less unequal. Shiro could resist all the way, or he could take the deal.

It came down to trust. Did he trust, or not? He didn't have much basis for it. But that had to be where you started. With a plan ready in case you got proven wrong, but never assuming the worst first.

Shiro let his head drop back to the floor and looked at the shadowed ribs of the ceiling, then nodded _yes._ The tendrils around his neck relaxed a little in surprise, and his neighbor waited to see whether he would struggle again. Shiro didn't move, though he did look over, watching.

His neighbor flowed closer in a whole-body ripple. They weren't really round like an anemone, but seemed able to either bunch up or extend their central mass, and were covered so thickly with tendrils that their underlying shape was hard to tell. The ones currently under their body were shorter and thicker, the ones above longer and thinner, but they didn't seem to have a top side or a bottom side, or any recognizable sense organs. Maybe they sensed everything through the tendrils, which were nearly all oriented toward Shiro like a field of long grass in a strong wind, though several were flickering between Shiro and their next-closest neighbor in a constant eddy. Maybe they could feel the energy flowing through the ship; maybe it was all currents to them. Shiro wished he could ask.

A dozen or so tendrils extended and waved toward him in that invisible current, tips flowing six or seven inches over Shiro without touching. Two dipped down and wandered from his ear to his shoulder; Shiro tensed but couldn't feel anything through the lingering numbness on that side.

_My sting will wear off soon,_ his neighbor said. _It disrupts your flow, but does no damage. Your top limbs are in the way, they should move._ Several tendrils wrapped the cuffs and nudged Shiro's bound arms up over his head and against the floor; Shiro took a deep breath through his nose and let it happen, leaving his head and chest unguarded. His neighbor touched gently at his floating ribs, then arched their body up over Shiro's solar plexus and wrapped around his whole midsection in a curling flex that looked slower than it was. There was a sideways tugging sensation that Shiro recognized as the jumpsuit unzipping to bare a several-inch-wide strip of skin just above his navel. The tendril tips touched him delicately, like a swathe of feathers, then with a little more weight, and he could feel some of them working themselves underneath his back.

There was a sudden deeper tug, right from his center. Not physical. Almost physical. Shiro gasped; it felt like pulling ten strands of yarn to knit his blanket all at once, instead of one, color and warmth spooling out of him painlessly but quickly. Like he'd been working with a dripping faucet before, and this was the faucet turned on. Shiro realized he was breathing deep and hard, his heart thudding in his chest like he was running. He pushed against the floor, arching his back, trying to get more air.

Everything blurred. He could feel the blank coming on, but couldn't avoid it. It was like his mind used to be smooth fabric, but here was a rip where the edges didn't meet anymore. He fell out of his body.

A black horizon. Strange, gorgeous stars blazing above, untwinkling and bright enough for their colors to be clear. His blanket draped over his shoulders, his own hands glowing as he held them up. _Whoa._

And _back_ , his arms bound again, flat on his back on the floor, reeling and confused and dangerously weak. He couldn't focus his eyes; everything was going flat and gray, like it had when the Druids' mistress healed him. This draining didn't hurt, but it could kill him just as easily as she nearly had. He bucked, but with the muzzle on he couldn't say _stop_.

Shiro brought his arms down and levered the backs of his hands under his neighbor, curling to get as much of the cuffs between them and his skin as he could. The exertion left dark blotches on his vision and his neighbor resisted, tightening around Shiro's middle, but Shiro managed to bring up one foot and wedge it under them as well. Thank god for flexibility. To make them let go he needed to distract them, but he had one thing that would probably do that.

One deep breath. Shiro dropped his blanket, folded in a neat square, right on top of his neighbor. Instantly all their tendrils bent in, letting go of him; their body uncurled from around his waist and curved up around the blanket, so taken with it that they rolled slightly off him to the side. Shiro hooked his foot around their central mass and kicked them weakly away, back toward their grid.

The blotches were eating most of his vision now, but he could see Junichy had stepped in, standing between and ready to separate them again. Shiro let his head drop and vanished his blanket, taking it back.

She stooped over him, undoing the muzzle and pulling it off the rest of the way. It had been loose, Shiro realized; stiff buckles would be difficult for someone without bones, but his neighbor had probably been working at it while Shiro was off in...wherever that had been. 

_Ano yo_ , he supposed, the hereafter, though it had seemed strangely empty except for those stars.

"Now they owe me," Junichy told him, "as well as you. They did not fulfill their promise, and they would have killed you. _Exactly_ as I feared!" She was blazingly angry. It felt nice, like being near a campfire. Shiro slitted his eyes and basked in it, and gingerly wiped his face on his shoulder. His mouth and chin were chapped and raw. His awareness of his body flickered in and out. He was breathing deep and hard, his heart still hammering, but it was immediate in one moment and a distant curiosity in the next.

She was back with the bowl, though he hadn't noticed her taking it, and she steadied him enough to drink. The water had some of the electrolyte powder in it, and it was the best thing he'd ever tasted. He guzzled it, gasping when he came up for air. "Thank you," he rasped. Damn. He wasn't sure he could hold the bowl to his mouth with his arms and wrists immobilized like this. He'd have to drink straight from the spigot.

Her arm held him down effortlessly. "You cannot walk yet. I will bring you more water. Again, do not worry about favors; Sssss'h owes me for this, not you. They promised you would not die of thirst, but they are lolling sated over there, in no condition to see to you."

Shiro looked. His neighbor was wound compactly all around themself in a roll against the wall in the back edge of their grid, subtly flickering with orange and blue and green, strange exotic colors against the palette of the ship. Resting, or sleeping; currently no threat.

"You are the first to survive their feeding," Junichy said, a little sadly. "They have been desperate, here on this ship, and they have killed their opponents. They regret it, I think. It is hard to tell."

Damn. He'd been doing so well at not thinking about it, but the memory of his fight rose up immediately, still hard-edged and visceral and real as the scent of blood and sand in his nose. "Then we have something in common," Shiro said, and he knew his grief was showing on his face.

"Ah." She turned back to him. "I wondered. We did not get shipcast, this time, but Oosn fought later and he heard there was a death."

"I didn't mean to," Shiro said, wanting to explain. "She surprised me. But I could have chosen to react differently, and I didn't. As the more skilled fighter my opponent's welfare is my responsibility." His voice was getting softer and softer. "Among my people...no amends would be enough."

"I see," said Junichy, and bent her head briefly. "You were on the sands. She wanted to win, and she came at you with a deadly blow, did she not? I will not judge you for acting to survive."

"Why not?" Shiro whispered.

The solid black of her eyes was unreadable, impossible to tell where she was looking. She dipped her ears, turning the question aside, then lifted his cuffed arms over her head and hefted him bodily by simply standing up. Shiro inhaled sharply and tried to cling, the room spinning blurrily until she laid him down again several meters over, next to the line between his grid and hers. 

"Because I may kill you one day," she said, "but for now, I am helping you. The Galra will tap you again and again, as long as you stay alive and keep winning. You need water, food, and rest if you want to be ready."

"Great," Shiro said. "Killing until I die. Wouldn't want to...miss that."

" _Winning_ until you _lose_ ," Junichy said. " _Living_ until you die. Is it so easy, to become a great explorer among your people, that they choose those ones who give up quickly?"

Shiro half-laughed. "No. You're just the first person I could complain to."

"Ah well, a silent stoic is just a bore. Perhaps you should complain more often. They can hardly muzzle you more."

"What a temptation. I'll tell jokes so bad they'll _wish_ I was biting them." It was hard to keep his eyes open. "What keeps you going?"

She paused, then frisked him professionally, finding the extra food bar stashed under his arm in less than three seconds. "I am having some of this. You have more piling up in your locker, once you can walk there."

"Fine. What keeps you going?"

She opened the bar and shoved a piece in his mouth. He raised his eyebrows and tested; it was tiring to raise both arms, but he could reach his mouth well enough to hold food. 

She sighed. "I have failed so many times in my life, but none has killed me yet. I am truly a study in improvements. My people are not citizens so travel is difficult, but I hope to one day report what happened to my principal and my partners, that others may learn from our mistakes. I fear I have been alone too long to be considered stable in another team. With no—" she used a word the translators didn't catch, "—to anyone but myself, I am no longer predictable. No longer sane." She smiled. "I might become a leader. Renounce my guild and take bloody control of my clan, wage war until I fall to my former colleagues. I would be a wily target."

"That sounds fun," Shiro agreed.

"It would be fun. I have it planned out. And that is what keeps me going, Champion — spite and the spirit of the contrary."

"And your principal and your partners."

She inclined her head. "They did not die for me. But I do think of them."

"Thank you for doing this, for me."

"You must decide what keeps you going," she said. "Eat."

* * *

Shiro had suspected, but when he floated awake from the deepest dreamless sleep he'd had since solitary and nodded Junichy off guarding him any more, it was bitter to shake out his blanket and confirm it. There was a repeating pattern of holes eaten through it across its whole length, like a plasma jet or a stream of acid had melted through it while it was folded, and one of the corners was ragged shreds. Okay. Deep breath. He could fix this.

He tried, for a minute or two, to wish it fixed. No effect. Well, he hadn't wished it fully-formed into existence in the first place. It made sense that mending it would have to be one loop at a time.

He had no idea how to knit a hole closed, and these cuffs kept his hands too far apart to use knitting needles. But crochet hooks were one-handed if you just had some way to hold tension on the yarn. He unzipped one bootie off his jumpsuit and wound the yarn around his toes, and his first mended hole was lumpy and uneven, but it worked — where there had been a hole there was a spiraling circular patch in the blanket.

He couldn't be the first person to think of toe-crochet. It was sort of fun. It would work pretty well in microgravity too, and would leave one hand free. He wouldn't have minded something like this during his watches on the long haul out to Kerberos.

On the other hand, it was a bit uncomfortable to be invisibly crocheting on his imaginary blanket where people could see, and quite obviously could not figure out what he was doing. Shiro resettled the blanket around himself and carried on as if he were oblivious to the stares.

His yarn wasn't green, this time; it didn't want to match the colors already in the blanket, and didn't want to vary on demand. It was some color so dark it was almost black — indigo or wine or deep shaded moss — but the exact hue was unclear in this light. It was still qiviut, but was thinner and silkier, with a sheen that chased deep jewel tones along it from some angles. 

Shiro had filled in three holes before he realized he'd seen the same colors on the starry plain. He had to stop and look closer. There were tiny flecks in the yarn, and combined with the sheen and the spiral of the crochet — his mends looked like little round starfields with faint galaxies.

He wasn't sure what that meant. 

_Threat._ Shiro jerked backwards and rolled to his feet, his back solidly to the wall, blanket and yarn and crochet hook gone to the nowhere they went when he dropped them.

It was his neighbor. They were crowded up into the corner where their grid touched Shiro's, and they had colormatched a tendril to the floor and snuck it over the line. The rest were out in full array, watching Shiro intently. _You woke me up,_ they said. _What were you doing? You hid something._

"You ate holes in my blanket," Shiro said. " _Holes._ You're just lucky it's still warm no matter how many holes there are."

_The net!_ Sssss'h said incredulously. _You made it? You are remaking it? What good does it do you? Your food comes from chemical reactions, you cannot eat like real people._

"It's mine," Shiro snapped. "I'm not eating it any more than I'd eat my clothes."

Their every limb bristled, with a sense-overlay like dozens of question marks. Shiro suspected the concept of clothing did not really translate.

"Besides,“ he added, “it's saved my life at least once so far, if you remember."

His neighbor flushed several colors in succession, then reluctantly said _I was at fault._

"Oh?" Shiro said implacably. "Continue, please. At fault for what?"

_I lacked control. I damaged your...clothing-covering-net._

"You nearly killed me, which you explicitly promised you would not do. What happens, here, to prisoners who make false exchanges?"

His neighbor rippled uneasily. _They are shut out. Their favors lose all value. No one will trade with them, even if both are starving._

"Your favors have only the value Junichy gave to them," Shiro said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Settle up with her, if you can give anything she will accept." 

Sssss'h hissed audibly, a startling noise. Their tendrils twisted and knotted violently, then said _Your worthless bone-locked thinking center is forgetting my second favor. Which is time-delayed only, not ceded to her, and not lacking value._

"Oh?" Shiro said mildly. 

_I will speed your healing,_ Sssss'h said, reaching out as they signed it.

Shiro blocked with the cuffs, catching the tips of the tendrils in the V where the two cuffs met and twisting his forearms around each other just enough that his neighbor could feel the magnetic field holding the cuffs together, and how that would convert to several hundred kilonewtons of crushing force on any delicate tendril tips caught between. Sssss'h went still.

"Please move slowly and don't touch me without asking," Shiro said, and released the hold. 

His neighbor hissed again, recovering their tendrils, rubbing them around and under the others. _Champion,_ they said sulkily. _You accepted my offer before. Are you passing it up?_

"No, you have my permission." Shiro bared his teeth. "Just go slowly and explain what you're doing."

_I am extending one limb to touch your right upper limb,_ they said, and reached out. Slowly.

The tendril tip flickered over his shoulder and down to his elbow, barely touching at all, then tapped along the cuff to the exposed back of his hand, his neighbor pausing to ask and receive permission to touch his bare skin. The tendril traced the bones of his hand, then twined through his fingers, an odd but nice sensation like a soft tingly ribbon.

_You were hurt,_ Sssss'h said, surprised. _The scarring is deliberate, in a pattern from minor to major. Someone did this to you._

"An increasing pattern, like a scale?" Shiro tilted his head, thinking. Maybe her damage hadn't been as haphazard as he thought. "Could someone who reads energy judge my rate of healing from that, if they knew how long it had been?"

_Yes, easily,_ Sssss'h said. _Who did this?_

"She never said her name," Shiro said calmly, watching for a reaction, "but someone else called her Haggar."

His neighbor shivered, and a half-dozen more tendrils rippled out. Shiro let them touch. _Her traces are pervasive,_ Sssss'h said after a moment. _Do you still want me to speed your healing?_

This meant she wasn't done with him. This meant she planned to examine him again, but he wasn't going to think about that right now. "Yes, but let's mess up her data. Can you speed the healing of the major scars but — re-open — the minor ones, so they'll seem to be healing slower than they should?"

Another ripple, the tendrils wrapping his hand and upper arm. _I can. Now?_

Shiro braced himself. "Yes, please."

It hurt, two white-hot slashes that made him suck air through his teeth and check reflexively for bleeding, his arm trembling like he remembered it doing from the pain of her touch. But a deeper warmth flowed through the bone too, down from his shoulder out to his fingertips like he could fingerpaint with sunshine. The sting was all on the surface, but the warmth pooled in his bones, dissolving the ache and making it smaller.

Shiro groaned in relief, curling forward around his arm, and his neighbor let go. One tendril remained, waving uncertainly toward his forehead. _Can I touch...?_

Shiro flinched away. _Black worms, black sharp-tipped burrowing under his skin, getting into his head._ He hit something hard and flinched from that too. Oh. He'd run into the wall. He reoriented; he was still in the two-wins grid, against the back wall; Junichy was asleep in the four-wins and his neighbor was still in the corner where three-wins touched two, comfortably out of reach and full array of tendrils watching him curiously. 

_Your flows changed,_ they said, forming the loops slowly as though they might frighten him off. _I will not touch those scars unless you ask._

"Not right now," Shiro said through a dry throat. He gave in to the urge and scrubbed his face against his shoulder, trying to wipe away the sense-memory, shuddering and gagging as more little bits of it came back to him.

_If your anatomy is like the Galra, that part has your thinking center and your air holes,_ his neighbor mused. _And most of your sense organs, correct? She hurt you badly. I will watch out for this Haggar._

"I hope you never meet her," Shiro said.

* * *

Champion was tapped for his third match while Junichy was still sleeping. She woke, of course, and saw him off with the bidding to fight well, as they always did when anyone was taken to fight. He made the sentries work to hold him, but otherwise did not fight the muzzle or the veil or say anything to the guard this time. It was a hard schedule, to be taken on every match day without any chance for a longer rest. She could see he was tired.

The sentries brought him back within the cycle, dropping him in the three-wins with Sssss'h and for the first time removing the muzzle, veil, and cuffs before they left. Champion fought in deadly earnest when they pinned him to do it, nearly slithering out of the hold, and jerked violently at the touch to the back of his neck, shaking in a way she'd seen him do only once or twice. When they let him go he scrambled away, fetching up against the wall and staring back in utter confusion.

Junichy frowned and cocked an ear at Sssss'h, who was playing very docile in the corner of three-wins with a sentry's sidearm focused on them. They rippled back, the motion almost too subtle for the translators to catch. _Mind-torn. The Druids' work._

Both her ears pinned back. This explained some things.

The rest of them relaxed when the sentries left, and Champion slid slowly down the wall to fold himself compactly. He did not yet seem to recognize where he was.

"He is mind-torn, and now he has no cuffs on," Junichy said. She cocked one ear at Sssss'h. "Perhaps the guard worried about leaving him cuffed with you, but perhaps you should be worried at being left with him!"

_I do not think he will attack unless he perceives a threat,_ they said, and sulked. _It isn't funny._

"Oh, but it is. Perhaps you should make a quick study of how to be unthreatening!"

_You are stupid and your gloating is ugly,_ they said. _I will feed on you next._

Vrenn was already back asleep, the Mother quiet in her coil. Oosn was safe in the seven-wins, insulated by a full row of empty grids from any excitement down here. He turned over with a huff, covering his ears with his top arms and leaving them to their bickering.

"First you must settle your debt to me, spawn," Junichy crowed. "Though since it was owed to him originally, I will generously forgive it if Champion kills you."

Champion had gone quite still, staring somewhere above their heads. After a long time he stirred and blinked, looking around in startlement, and Sssss'h let their tendrils grow tall and flush with aggressive color. _Quickly, stop plotting about how you will attack Champion when he is unaware! I warned you he reacts badly to being threatened!_

Champion took several deep breaths, still blinking, and rubbed his face. "I'm not even going to respond to that," he said. "How are you? Fine, still alive, thank you for asking. No cuffs, that's nice. That's _new_."

"You didn't go to Medic," Junichy observed. "Did you spare the sentries this time?"

He smiled, slow and satisfied. "I tripped them into each other. And threw them. I can't really damage them barehanded, but it _was_ a fight." 

"They did not give you a weapon?" she asked, startled.

"I had a staff, and I used it, and I won. Then I threw it away." He laid down on his side, back to the wall and face pensive now. "I really hate the sentries. But I wanted them to win quickly."

Junichy traced a pattern on the floor. "Fighting them every time is...unusual. If you plan to keep doing that it will tire you."

_They won't pipe the shipcast to us either,_ Sssss'h grumbled. _They don't want other fighters to copy your rebellions._

"Well, they use the shockrods on me when they catch me, so I can't recommend following my example," he said tiredly.

_That is the part I would especially like to hear,_ Sssss'h said. 

Champion raised his head and glared. "I noticed that we share a grid now. That means I can fight you any time I want. Did you notice that I can see, and my hands are free? That means that you won't win."

Sssss'h hissed, retreating to the far boundary of the three-wins, and Champion dropped his head again. "Leave me alone while I'm sleeping. I'll drink in a bit. I'm just tired."

Champion slept on and off for more than a cycle, huddled against the wall. Junichy reminded him to drink and eat, and he did, asleep again almost sooner than he finished swallowing. Halfway through her exercises after her own sleep, she noticed that his eyes were open, staring at nothing.

He blinked at her look; he wasn't lost in a gap again. She walked up and sat cross-legged at the boundary of four-wins, directly facing him, like she had when the sentries had dragged him in the first time. "I have only four wins, but I have seen many fighters die in this pen," she said softly. "Some of them fought too hard, for too long. Some of them simply decided to stop fighting. What are you thinking?"

He took a deeper breath and let it go. "Tell me a way _out_ ," he said. "A way out of the arena."

She snorted. "Feet first. All those who died were finding a way out, Champion."

"What happens to the fighters who get too injured to fight again?"

"Either they die or they are healed, as you know." She shrugged, dipping her ears. "A zero can escape by injury, or someone who shows in their first fight that they survived only through clumsy luck. You, my friend? After your first fight, they will never let you go. You will die on the sand."

His expression hardened. "No," he said, "I won't."

"Rare are those who deny it."

He flicked a sharp glance at her. The contrast of his pupils made his gaze obvious, and he did it quite casually. It was interesting, to be so aware of the exact direction another person was looking. She wondered if he used it for misdirection in his fights. 

"Galra arenas have two exits," he said. "Just one is death. What is the other?"

"Well." She sat back, and smacked her hands on her knees. Sssss'h perked up, and Oosn looked around. She grinned at her audience, the wide grin of a storyteller alone too long to be quite sane, and drew them in.

"The way of death is wide! It lies before and behind us, above our heads, below our feet, on our right, on our left, and every other side to which we are exposed. The way of victory is a knife edge! There have been many fighters who survived many fights. Most of us do not reach ten wins, but those who reach twenty may beg a boon, as Myzax did, and Tethiner before him and many more before them. The Druids give you a weapon at their whim, and though you beg you may not choose. Many the fighter does not survive their gift!

"Most of us do not reach ten wins, but it is said those who reach fifty may beg a favor. Not a favor from a fellow-fighter, but a favor from the Empire itself. Anyone you choose save yourself may go free and pardoned, a citizen under the Empire — until the next crime they commit, for the Empire overlooks but once!

"Most of us do not teach ten wins, but it is said those who reach one hundred may ask any wish of Zarkon himself. For Zarkon once cloaked himself and fought in the arena, and he was undefeated for a hundred wins, and he swore that for the one who could match his feat waits freedom and riches both. But beware if your hundredth opponent is cloaked! For Zarkon walked that knife edge to the end, and he is bored again."

She watched Champion as she spoke, and saw a light come back into his eyes. He straightened as he listened, his head tilting the way he did before finding a sudden and brutal way around his opponent's attack.

She did not press, then. Oosn broke in to correct her, that Zarkon's streak was five hundred wins — a thousand — no one knew, because he had destroyed the records and no other fighter survived, the arenas emptied by his victories. Then Oosn told a story, for such was the rule, about the number of stars in the sky. After that Vrenn sang, loud enough to rattle her ribs but nearly too low to hear, about three lovers trying to travel beyond the Empire and how far they had to go. Sssss'h told the only story they ever told, about the death of their world and the scattering of their people and the impressive list of crimes they committed before capture, and the Mother was silent.

When eyes turned to Champion, he was ready. "Long, long ago, an old man and an old woman lived together in a simple hut in a bamboo forest, and they had never been able to have children, but they wanted a child. Every morning the man went out to cut and gather bamboo, which is a kind of very large grass and is hollow inside, that part's important..."

It was an interesting story, the beautiful child found in the bamboo and claimed by her family the royalty of the moon, since Champion insisted that the moon of the story was lifeless and that his people had been uncontacted until his own ship was captured.

_Then they still are uncontacted,_ Sssss'h pointed out. _How could they know what happened to you?_

Champion looked aside, and did not reply. He was cautious about sharing any details of his world or his people with them — though his story had been perhaps more revealing than he realized, with its emphasis on meeting obligations, even if those they fell on did not consent to them or even know about them.

"I envy that you have something to protect," Junichy said. 

Champion winced. "I'm sorry for your losses," he murmured, and looked at his neighbor, which was not wise.

_I hope your people are conquered already,_ Sssss'h said, twisting and knotting viciously. _I hope your world is dead. I pity **you** for thinking you have hope._

Champion stiffened, staring back for a long minute, but did not recoil. "If my world is safe, they have no idea of the danger they're in, and nothing I know of can protect them," he said, and looked down. "You...aren't wrong. They might have been conquered and I might live out my life as a prisoner and never even know. I need to acknowlege that there is no difference between us, not really. I need to look at the larger picture."

_There is a difference,_ Sssss'h said, and hissed audibly. _You still have something to lose, and you never protected it. Hide your world from us all you like, but the Druids know all that you know. You are a broken bowl._

_"I did not break myself,"_ Champion snarled. "You think I just gave it up? You think they would bother to break something that poured itself out willingly? That's where you're wrong. I resisted, and I protected my friends, and I would do it again. You're all alone. You have nothing to protect in the first place."

_**You** are alone,_ Sssss'h said, rearing. _What excuse will you make for your failures next time?_

"I don't choose what they do," Champion said, abruptly calm. "If they decide to hurt me again, they will. But they won't get anything out of it."

_That's what you think now. You should let me feed on you again. Your end would be painless._

"How altruistic of you. But no."

_You are the one moping about killing your opponents. You are ship Champion, and you are the one Junichy is convincing not to die._

Champion looked at her, startled. Junichy shrugged helplessly.

"I thank her. But... Sssss'h," Champion said, struggling on the name, "You're accusing me of betraying my people, but everything the Druids learned from us was information they already had. I am not the one who feels guilty over betraying my people." His eyes were very steady. "Look at yourself first, before you look for the weaknesses of others."

Sssss'h was silent, and did not snap back.

Champion looked at them thoughtfully. "You pretended not to, but you know who Haggar is, don't you." The Mother stirred at that, and Junichy took a sharp breath, placing the name.

Sssss'h drew in on themself. _I know,_ they said, one tendril moving.

"If you met her," Champion said, "there was nothing you could do."

* * *

Junichy knew how to read the balance, how to press and how to wait. She waited her moment, and it came later that cycle, when most were asleep but Champion's eyes were open, his head tilted again as he looked across the room but saw something much larger.

"You are thinking about my story," she said softly. 

He motioned with his head, _yes_.

"All the fighters know it, in every ship I have ever been on, and those who watch the fights know it. Of course," she added, "this story cannot be relied on. No one now in the arena has ever heard of a fighter achieving a hundred wins undefeated. There is no guarantee Zarkon would hear such a fighter, or that it would end well."

"Of course," he echoed.

She smiled small, a private thing. "I wondered if your other promises were too heavy to bear. But you are not leaving us quite yet."

"No," he said, his smile signifying regret. "I won't be able to keep those promises. If I want to live I might have to let them go. If nothing in my power can keep my world safe..." He looked at her, at all of them, sleeping and awake, "I might have to let my priorities change. I won't die here. But I hope my people can forgive me."

* * *

* * *

* * *

_One year later_

Shizukuishi Naori walked slowly down the hotel hallway. She wasn't proud of pressuring the receptionist to give her this number, but, well. Being an obasan gave her a social power she rarely used, and it was warranted here. Nerving herself up, she knocked on 1201.

After a minute, someone inside checked the peephole, then undid the chain and pulled the door open, breaking its pneumatic seal. The AC was on inside and cool tendrils seeped out, a contrast to the steam-heat of the hallway and the sweat down Naori's back. 

"Can I help you?" Colleen Holt said doubtfully. She didn't speak Japanese, and she wouldn't be expecting visitors now that all the convention events were long finished for the day, attendees scattered back to their hotels or gone to explore the Kyoto nightlife.

"Doctor Holt," Naori said, and saw the other woman's face shutter. "I don't believe we have spoken before, but we have met. My name is Shizukuishi Naori, and Shirogane Takashi is my nephew. My apologies for seeking you out without warning."

"Is this about what happened last month?" Holt asked, cool and professional now. "Yes, I have seen the footage; and no, I'm sorry, but I will not speculate for the press as a private individual."

"I will not ask you to, Doctor, and I am also here privately. I have something I would like to show you. I believe you have a right to know."

Holt pursed her mouth, eyes lingering on Naori's matching convention badge, then nodded. "I remember you from the service. His other family wore suits, and you wore full kimono. I wanted to speak to you then, but with one thing and another... You'd better come in."

Inside the matchbox-sized hotel room — six mats would be roomy in a washitsu but could barely fit all the Western-style furniture used here — Naori sat when invited on the edge of the bed and calmly took her package out of its Daimaru shopping bag, unwrapping the furoshiki to reveal a plain international shipping box, opened along one edge. "I received this one week ago. It was not airmail, so I believe it spent two or three weeks in transit."

Colleen turned it with one finger to read the sender's address: a P.O. box in Elmira, Nevada. The second-closest small town to the Garrison. She stood up, also calmly, and pulled a laptop out of her bag, connecting her phone and typing quickly. "There. Now we can speak freely for a few minutes."

Naori smiled. "His handwriting is not the same, but I have tested the materials inside and I am satisfied they are genuine. Doctor Holt, this package is from my nephew. Takashi sent it from Nevada one month ago, _alive_."

"What convinced you?" Colleen said. "That's— hard to believe. I know for a fact that Wayfarer is still on Kerberos, still sending updates. What convinced you that Shiro sent that package?"

"These," Naori said, and shook out the jumpsuit and the shirt. "The shirt is synthetic, nothing special about its cut or weaving — we can manufacture without seams — but no process on Earth is set up to produce this fiber. There is, in fact, no cost-effective way to do it. Setting that aside—" 

She demonstrated unzipping and zipping the jumpsuit.

"A self-healing membrane?" Colleen whispered.

"You may know I work in textile engineering, and my research is in differential topologies and manifolds — I am attending this convention to sit on one of the TQFT panels."

"Topological quantum field theory? You're _that_ Shizukuishi," Colleen murmured. "Of course. I beg your pardon. I'd seen your name but I didn't connect it." She hadn't looked up from the jumpsuit, still zipping and unzipping it and rubbing a fold between her fingers.

"So you understand when I say we do not know any way to make a material do this," Naori said. "Not in a matrix that behaves so much like fabric otherwise. It has memory for its own elasticity, but if it was reset — I have tested a sample — this garment is human-sized and human-shaped because a human last wore it, but if it were reset it could fit a dog or an elephant, Doctor Holt."

"You're telling me that humans did not make this," Colleen said, looking up. Her eyes were very sharp.

"I'm telling you there is very strong support for that hypothesis. And that is in fact what my nephew's note says."

"God," Colleen said, looking down again. "This should be in quarantine. _We_ should be in quarantine."

"Takashi did not write in detail," Naori said grimly, "but if I understand his implications correctly, that may be the least of our troubles."

Colleen wiped her eyes, and nodded. "I have been...corresponding anonymously with some others who aren't satisfied with the official explanations, or who saw satellite or telescope recordings of the near-earth objects last month, before the Exploration Committee confiscated the data." Her gaze was burningly fierce. "You'd better tell me everything."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINIS
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> (Come cavort [on tumblr](http://szzzt-captain.tumblr.com/) where I document [writing adventures](http://szzzt-captain.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-adventures) and mutter about [the shirofics](http://szzzt-captain.tumblr.com/tagged/the-shirofic) and occasionally post [arts](http://szzzt-captain.tumblr.com/tagged/my-arts) into the void!)


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